fcibrarp  of  Che  theological  gmrimty 

PRINCETON    •    NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 

E.  A.  Richards 


RX  9178  .H34  P8  1894 
Hall'  Thomas  C.  "58-1936. 
The  power  of  an  endless  lit 


THE     POWER 


OF 


AN     ENDLESS     LIFE 


MAR  26  1965 

THE    POWEI%utt^ 


y 


£ 


OF 


AN    ENDLESS    LIFE 


BY 


THOMAS   C.    HALL 

PASTOR    OF   THE    FOURTH     PRESBYTERIAN    CHURCH, 
CHICAGO 


CHICAGO 

A.   C.    McCLURG   AND    COMPANY 

1894 


Copyright 

By  A.  C.  McClurg  and  Co. 

a.  d.  1894 


PREFACE. 


Only  the  kind  insistence  of  friends,  and 
more  particularly  of  one  friend,  whose  judg- 
ment I  have  learnt  more  and  more  to  trust, 
and  to  whom  I  desire  to  dedicate  this  little 
volume,  leads  me  to  add  to  the  many  books 
that  clamor  for  our  time.  Without  any  thought 
of  more  than  a  possible  and  passing  interest 
in  the  form  of  the  message,  it  is  the  earnest 
hope  that  some  may  find  in  these  pages  a  word 
to  their  deepest  life.  The  form  is  that  of  the 
direct  appeal.  Repetitions  mark  the  frag- 
mentary character  of  the  preparation,  but  the 
sermons  were  written  'with  the  profound  con- 
viction that  more  deeply  than  ever  must  organ- 
ized Christianity  enter  into  the  secrets  of  our 
Lord  and  King,  and  learn  from  Christ  "  The 
Power  of  an  Endless  Life." 

T.  C.  H. 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

I.    Forms  of  Godliness 9 

II.    The  Power  of  an  Endless  Life   .    .  29 

III.  Christ  made  Perfect 52 

IV.  The  Impulsive  Type  of  Christianity  71 
V.    The    Intellectual    Type    of    Chris- 
tianity      88 

VI.    The  Ethical  Type  of  Christianity  .  107 

VII.    The  Mystic  Type  of  Christianity    .  128 

VIII.    The  Three  Crosses  of  Calvary  .    .  149 

IX.    The  Temporal  Kingdom 167 


THE 

POWER  OF  AN  ENDLESS  LIFE 


I. 

FORMS   OF   GODLINESS. 

Holding  a  form  of  godliness,  but  having  denied 
the  power  thereof :  from  these  also  turn  away. 
—  2  Tim.  iii.  5. 

HPHIS  warning  is  interesting  as  an  in- 
dication of  what  Paul  already  saw 
coming  into  the  life  of  the  ancient  primi- 
tive church.  Some  would  persuade  us 
that  the  church  of  the  first  three  centuries 
was  a  model  church  in  every  way,  but 
even  during  the  life  of  Paul  very  nearly 
all  the  marks  of  degradation  and  disinte- 
gration that  are  to  be  seen  more  clearly 
working  later  on  were  already  before  his 
prophetic  eye.     Indeed,  before  three  cen- 


IO  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

turies  had  passed  the  church  had  cor- 
rupted herself  alike  in  doctrine  and  in 
ritual. 

It  is  also  interesting  to  see  that  Paul 
here  makes  the  sharp  distinction  which 
later  philosophy  has  emphasized  and 
developed,  the  distinction  between  the 
form  and  the  essential,  between  expres- 
sion and  power,  between  accident  and 
that  which  is  real.  This  distinction  has 
passed  into  the  thinking  of  the  present 
generation  more  particularly  through  the 
transcendental  philosophy  of  Germany,  so 
that  it  is  a  commonplace,  familiar  thing 
with  us,  many  of  us  dwelling  upon  it  with- 
out knowing  very  clearly  the  origin  of 
the  idea. 

It  is  perfectly  clear  to  any  one  that 
reflects,  that  the  form  and  the  essence  are 
not  the  same,  that  the  essence  is  some- 
thing so  intangible  that  it  is  often  very 
difficult  to  describe.  But  no  matter  how 
imperfect  the  form,  the  essential  under- 


FORMS    OF    GODLINESS.  II 

neath  the  form  is  after  all  the  real  thing, 
the  other  is  accidental.  The  forms  in 
which  men  hold  godliness  are  of  infinite 
variety.  What  is  godliness  ?  Godli- 
ness is  just  what  the  word  tells  you;  it 
is  god-li-ness,  or  the  quality  of  being  like 
God.  In  Him  we  live,  and  move,  and 
have  our  being.  The  old  Greek  poet 
saw  that  clearly,  and  Paul  emphasizes 
his  statement  and  endorses  it  by  quoting 
him.  We  feel  in  our  better  moments 
how  helpless  we  are  to  do  right,  and  in 
our  better  moments  we  attribute  all  our 
right  doing  to  the  divine  impulse  that 
is  in  our  life.  This  is  the  real  spiritual 
meaning  of  the  doctrine  of  total  cor- 
ruption. It  is  the  expression  of  the 
sense  within  us  that  we  are  helpless 
apart  from  God,  that  it  is  only  as 
God  lives  in  us  that  righteousness  is 
godliness.  Wherever,  therefore,  we  find 
anything  that  is  admirable,  it  has  its 
source  in  the  divine,  God  is  to  have  the 


12  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

glory.  This  is  the  real  foundation  of 
the  hope  that  is  strong  in  every  one  of 
us,  that  Christ  is  much  larger  than  the 
historic  knowledge  of  Christ;  that  wher- 
ever there  is  self-sacrifice,  wherever  there 
is  hungering  of  the  soul  for  God,  wher- 
ever there  is  the  breaking,  contrite  heart, 
there  is  the  revelation  of  the  presence  of 
God.  The  Christ  as  manifested  in  the 
historical  form  is  the  incarnation  of  that 
complete  godliness,  the  other  forms  of 
which,  so  far  as  they  are  human,  are 
always  more  or  less  imperfect. 

So  you  will  see  also  that  there  are 
forms  of  godliness  so  incomplete  that 
they  are  masked  caricatures  of  the  Christ- 
like life.  Indeed,  if  you  thoughtfully  con- 
sider the  familiar  forms  of  godliness,  you 
will  find  in  them  all  some  element  of  the 
caricature  that  men  are  so  apt  to  trace 
in  the  lines  of  the  picture.  The  pagan 
forms  of  q-odliness  seem  at  first  siriit 
warped  out  of  all  semblance  to  religious 


FORMS    OF    GODLINESS.  1 3 

life ;  loaded  down  with  iniquity,  heart- 
less selfishness,  gross  sensuality.  Heathen 
worship,  so  far  as  it  has  value,  has  it  only 
as  an  imperfect  expression  of  the  craving 
of  the  human  heart  to  come  to  that  divine 
source  of  which  every  man  at  some  time 
in  his  life  feels  a  longing  to  drink.  But 
all  worship  has  value  as  by  it  we  find 
ourselves  in  contact  with  God.  This 
contact  is  divine  life,  however  much  we 
may  caricature  it,  however  poor  the 
expression  we  may  give  it,  however 
rude  may  be  our  conception  of  what  the 
reality  is. 

In  history  we  see  jostling  each  other 
forms  of  godliness,  such  as  the  philosophy 
of  heathendom  contrasted  with  primitive 
Christianity,  as  paganism  was  contrasted 
with  Judaism.  The  forms  of  godliness 
as  we  see  them  in  pagan  Greece  and 
pagan  Rome,  were  such  as  indicate  that 
philosophy  represented  an  advance  on 
the  popular  forms  of  Roman  and  Greek 


14  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

godliness.  Hence  philosophy  set  to 
work  to  destroy  these  older  forms,  but 
its  weakness  was  that  it  put  in  their  place 
a  form  only  a  little  better. 

Then  there  are  the  forms  of  godliness 
which  we  see  in  the  splendid  basilicas 
and  glorious  cathedrals  and  the  mon- 
asteries of  the  Middle  Ages,  —  forms  of 
godliness  splendid  in  their  outward  ap- 
pearance, high,  imposing,  majestic  to 
the  imaginations  of  men ;  forms  under 
which  the  deep  underlying  craving  of  the 
human  heart  for  some  expression  of  di- 
vinity sought  to  make  itself  felt  in  the 
world's  real  history.  There  are  the  forms 
of  godliness  as  we  find  them  in  the  theo- 
logical scholasticism  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  —  the  scholasticism  which,  just 
as  the  primitive  Christianity  undermined 
the  Jewish  philosophy,  sought  in  its  turn 
to  undermine  the  forms  of  godliness  under 
which  the  religious  spirit  had  expressed 
itself  for  fifteen  centuries,  because  it  had 


FORMS    OF    GODLINESS.  1 5 

found,  and  knew  in  its  heart  of  hearts, 
that  these  forms  were  interfering  with 
the  growth  of  the  divine  life  in  its  fuller 
expression.  Scholasticism  was  also  only 
a  form,  and  it  had  to  give  way  to  some- 
thing better.  The  Evangelical  Emotion- 
alism was  a  form  under  which  a  better 
godliness,  a  new  appreciation  of  the 
Christ  life,  a  holier  conception  of  what 
life  ought  to  be,  sought  to  undermine 
scholastic  medievalism  that  Christ  might 
be  still  more  plainly  seen. 

Now  can  any  nineteenth-century  com- 
munity, I  might  almost  say  any  nine- 
teenth-century congregation,  say  that  all 
these  forms  of  godliness  are  not  more  or 
less  expressed  among  us  ?  There  is  dog- 
matism among  us,  plenty  of  it,  undiluted, 
most  undisguised  dogmatism.  There  is 
heathenism  among  us,  heathenism  that 
voices  itself  precisely  in  the  sceptical, 
cynical,  sneering  philosophy  which  was 
on  the  lips  of  Caesar  and  Cicero.     There 


1 6  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

is  among  us  the  baptized  dogmatism  that 
formed  the  life  of  the  church  of  the  third 
and  tenth  centuries,  —  a  baptized  dogma- 
tism whose  whole  conception  is  aesthetic, 
and  which  is  satisfied  with  the  husks  of 
externalism  without  coming  in  contact 
with  the  reality.  There  is  mediaeval  scho- 
lasticism among  us.  It  is  found  most 
largely  expressing  itself  from  the  pulpit, 
but  there  is  plenty  of  it  there.  There  is 
evangelicalism  in  all  its  strength,  in  all  its 
weakness  among  us.  Sometimes  it  is  not 
power,  sometimes  it  is  a  form  of  godli- 
ness that  is  made  up  of  a  great  many 
forms ;  it  is  the  synthesis,  the  putting 
together  of  many  forms ;  it  is  the  cor- 
ruption of  the  divine  idea.  We  are,  to-day 
as  ever,  in  danger  of  holding  the  forms 
of  godliness  without  the  power  thereof. 
You  may  ask,  then,  is  it  a  matter  of 
indifference  whether  we  are  pagans  or 
heathens ;  whether  we  hold  mediaeval 
scholasticism,      or     evangelical     forms  ? 


FORMS    OF    GODLINESS.  I  J 

Yes,  it  may  be  a  matter  of  complete  in- 
difference. If  you  are  denying  the  power, 
you  might  as  well  deny  the  power  under 
one  form  as  another.  If  you  are  denying 
the  power  of  God,  it  is  all  one  to  High 
Heaven  under  what  form  you  make  your 
denial.  In  the  last  days  there  shall  come 
those  who  shall  hold  the  forms  of  godli- 
ness, but  deny  the  power  thereof. 

What  is  the  power  of  godliness  ?  The 
New  Testament  is  so  full  of  it  that  we 
have  not  seen  it.  It  forms  so  much  of 
Paul's  writings  that  we  have  almost  en- 
tirely ignored  it.  It  is  so  important  a 
factor  that  we  have  left  it  out.  It  is  of 
so  real  moment  in  our  religious  life  that 
we  have  let  it  pass  us.  The  power  of 
God  is  the  divine  indwelling  promised 
when  the  Holy  Spirit  came  down  at 
Pentecost,  promised  to  every  man  who 
will  share  with  the  early  disciples  the 
Pentecostal  moment.  It  is  God  in  us. 
It  is  the  Holy    Spirit   speaking    to  and 

2 


1 8  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 


inspiring  us  in  the  inspired  book,  or  in 
the  church,  or  in  the  pulpit,  —  inspiring 
us  to  right  doing,  to  right  living,  to  right 
thinking,  to  right  sacrifice. 

This  is  the  power  of  godliness ;  and 
our  denials  of  it,  however  much  we  may 
cover  them  in  words,  amount  always  to 
the  same  thing.  We  deny  it  in  a  hun- 
dred ways.  We  say  to  ourselves  that  our 
form  is  convenient,  that  we  are  satisfied 
with  the  present.  The  power  of  godli- 
ness denied  in  the  interests  of  the  form 
is  the  real  weakness  of  the  individual, 
the  social,  the  Christian  life.  Let  us  see 
what  is  the  power  of  this  godliness.  It 
is  the  power  of  God.  What  did  it  do  in 
New  Testament  times?  It  shook  men 
so  that  with  blanched  faces  they  saw  the 
coming  judgment,  so  that  with  trembling 
voices  they  declared  to  their  generation 
what  were  the  penalties  of  unrighteous- 
ness. It  shook  men  so  that  their  lives 
were   changed.      They   forgot    the    past 


FORMS    OF    GODLINESS.  1 9 

and  flung  themselves  into  the  future, 
careless  of  what  it  brought  forth  for  them. 
The  power  of  godliness  made  them  new 
men  in  Christ  Jesus,  sent  them  to  the 
cross  if  need  were,  that  men  might  know 
that  the  power  of  God  was  righteousness 
and  righteousness  altogether,  and  that 
denial  was  death. 

There  was  seen  the  power  of  that  god- 
liness when  about  the  tenth  century  men 
began  to  realize  that  things  could  not  go 
on  as  they  were  going.  The  monasteries 
were  heaps  of  corruption.  The  priests 
were  blind  leaders  of  the  blind.  The 
nobles  had  added  field  to  field  and  house 
to  house  until  there  was  no  place  for  the 
starving  peasant,  who  had  to  accept  any- 
thing the  insolent  nobles  chose  to  give 
them.  These  warred  among  themselves 
until  blood  covered  all  the  hills ;  but  if  the 
peasant  dared  lift  his  hand  they  would 
stop  their  wars  among  themselves  and 
unite  in  still  further  trampling  upon  the 


20  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

neck  of  the  down-trodden  serf,  grinding 
him  into  the  dust,  mingling  his  blood 
with  their  sacrifices  and  his  flesh  with 
their  feasts.  Things  could  not  go  on  as 
as  they  were.  The  power  of  godliness 
seized  on  one  or  two  men,  and  they  went 
forth  with  voices  shaken  with  the  thun- 
ders of  Sinai  and  melting  with  the  mercy 
of  the  Mount,  telling  men  that  the  King 
would  come,  and  that  their  judgment 
was  of  heaven.  Men  did  repent  for  a 
little.  God  did  lift  for  a  little  the  clouds 
that  hung  over  them.  Yet  they  again 
forgot  him.  Then  he  baptized  Europe 
in  blood.  Europe  deserved  it:  and 
out  of  her  ruins  he  fenced  a  new  vine- 
yard, and  built  a  new  wine-press,  and  he 
looks  for  grapes  :  it  is  for  you  and  me  to 
say  what  he  will  find.  Will  he  find 
grapes,  or  only  wild  grapes  ? 

The  power  of  godliness  was  displayed 
in  a  very  startling  way  in  two  countries 
very  near  to  each  other;  and  we  have  a 


FORMS    OF    GODLINESS.  21 

prophetic  voice  telling  us  in  accents  that 
ought  to  ring  down  the  ages  what  came 
of  the  power  of  godliness  denied  in 
France.  Read  Carlyle's  History  of  the 
French  Revolution,  and  learn  what  the 
power  of  godliness  denied  brought  forth. 
Over  England  hung  precisely  the  same 
prophetic  clouds.  The  conditions  in 
England,  if  we  are  to  trust  the  historian, 
were  not  very  much  better  than  the  con- 
ditions in  France ;  but  the  power  of  god- 
liness became  manifest,  and  changed  the 
lives  of  two  Oxford  students,  who  gath- 
ered a  few  more  students  around  them. 
The  power  of  godliness  shook  them,  and 
they  went  down  to  the  Cornish  miners. 
They  gathered  these  miners  about  them  ; 
the  tears  rolled  down  their  faces,  these 
poor,  despised,  outcast  members  of  so- 
ciety !  There  were  Pentecostal  waves 
which  shook  England  from  centre  to 
centre,  rolled  over  into  this  country  where 
conditions   were  becoming  very  bad    in- 


2  2  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

deed,  and  they  stopped  for  a  little  the 
processes  that  were  going  on  here  with 
such  frightful  rapidity.  The  pov/er  of 
godliness  saved  England  for  a  little. 

Now  the  power  of  godliness  is  a  very 
strange  thing.  All  power  is.  You  can- 
not put  your  finger  upon  it.  If  I  were 
to  speak  to  you  about  the  power  of 
gravitation,  you  might  know  its  laws,  you 
might  know  its  results.  You  might  say 
that  it  shows  itself  so  and  so,  and  in- 
creases in  such  and  such  a  ratio  ;  that  it 
holds  the  world  together  in  such  and 
such  a  way.  But  what  is  gravitation  ? 
You  do  not  know,  nor  does  any  one.  The 
best  explanation  that  is  given  of  it  en- 
counters so  many  insuperable  mathemati- 
cal objections  that  there  is  practically  no 
adequate  explanation  of  what  gravitation 
is.  The  power  that  makes  our  spring 
creep  slowly  upon  us,  —  the  power  of  the 
sun's  heat, —  we  know  not  either  what  it 
is.     We  can  change  the  heat  into  light, 


FORMS    OF    GODLINESS.  23 

and  the  motion  into  electricity;  we  can 
change  the  electricity  into  lifting  power; 
we  can  even  take  the  electricity  and  in 
some  mysterious  way  change  it  into  vital 
power,  and  putting  it  through  the  roots 
of  trees  and  plants  greatly  increase  their 
vital  activity.  There  is  some  strange 
correlation  of  all  the  physical  powers 
round  about  us ;  but  if  you  were  to  ask 
scientific  men  what  is  the  power,  they 
would  say  they  do  not  know;  they  only 
know  its  results,  and  that  is  all  science 
deals  with. 

Now  we  know  the  powrer  of  godliness 
only  as  we  see  it  exemplified  in  results. 
You  see  the  little  bud  in  its  hard  case. 
If  the  hail  were  to  come  it  would  only 
jump  off  the  hard  enclosed  bud ;  but 
the  power  of  the  sun  is  going  to  break 
through  that  hard  case,  and  the  little 
bud  will  fling  itself  out  into  God's  sun- 
shine with  all  the  laughter  of  new  green 
leaves   to    hail    the   joy   of    the   coming 


24  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

summer.  The  denial  of  the  power  of 
godliness  is  the  denial  of  that  which  can 
change  the  forms  of  life  as  they  are  about 
us.  If  you  say,  "  I  do  not  believe  in  the 
power  of  the  spring :  I  do  not  believe  in 
this  power  of  the  sun ;  I  do  not  believe 
what  you  tell  me  of  the  strange  alchemy 
of  the  chemists ;  "  I  can  only  take  you 
out  and  show  you  the  bud  bursting  into 
the  fulness  of  its  joy,  and  say,  "  Some- 
thing did  that;  some  power  there  was  that 
did  that.  I  cannot  analyze  it  for  you,  but 
it  is  there."  The  form  is  nothing;  if  the 
power  is  there  it  will  make  its  own  form, 
it  will  find  its  own  expression.  The 
denial  of  the  power  of  godliness  is  the 
denial  that  there  is  in  this  world  a  di- 
vine life  capable  of  changing  the  human 
heart,  breaking  its  hardness,  changing 
the  stony  heart  into  a  heart  of  flesh, 
making  us  sympathetic,  tender,  and  true. 
The  denial  of  the  power  of  godliness  is 
the  denial  of  the  power  to  do  this  thing. 


FORMS    OF    GODLINESS.  25 

That  denial  is  written  large  in  the  lives 
of  some  of  us,  though  we  hold  the  forms 
of  godliness.  You  say,  "  I  am  sound  in 
in  my  orthodoxy,  I  accept  the  Shorter 
Catechism  and  the  Confession  of  Faith  ; 
I  believe  everything."  And  what  does  it 
amount  to  ?  It  may  amount  to  this,  that 
you  are  holding  the  forms  of  godliness; 
and  the  servant  in  your  household,  the 
employee  in  your  office,  the  tenant  in 
your  dwelling,  and  the  dependent  upon 
you  or  the  employer  who  is  over  you, 
looks  for  the  true  power,  and  sees  rather 
the  awful  denial  of  the  power  of  god- 
liness, making  you  selfish,  making  you 
unlovable,  making  you  a  lover  of  pleas- 
ure and  not  a  lover  of  God,  denying  in 
your  lives  the  things  you  profess  in  the 
church ;  so  that  men  and  women  who 
know  religion  only  as  you  have  taught 
it  to  them,  say  that  it  is  hard  and  cold, 
a  dreary,  barren  intellectual  belief,  a 
dogma,  and  they  cannot  accept  it,  and  say, 


26  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

"  Away  with  it !  "  They  learn  from  you 
to  deny,  not  the  power,  that  they  never 
see,  but  the  form  of  godliness,  and  then 
you  weep  over  their  scepticism.  You 
have  friends,  you  have  wives,  you  have 
husbands,  you  have  dependents,  you  have 
employers  ;  how  is  it  ?  Are  the  forms  of 
godliness  that  you  practise  so  full  of 
power  that  they  are  the  natural  expres- 
sion of  the  divine  life  written  on  your 
very  brow?  as  when  Stephen  stood  up 
before  those  who  denied  the  power  of 
godliness,  and  as  he  looked  his  face 
became  as  the  face  of  an  angel,  telling 
them  to  their  faces  of  their  sin,  rehears- 
ing all  the  ills,  all  the  vices,  all  the  ini- 
quity of  the  past  history  of  the  children 
of  Israel  till  at  last  they  could  stand  it 
no  longer,  and  they  gnashed  their  teeth 
at  him  and  took  him  and  stoned  him. 
"Jerusalem!  Jerusalem!  thou  that  ston- 
est  the  prophets  and  slayest  those  that 
are  sent  unto    thee,  how  often  would  I 


FORMS    OF    GODLINESS.  2 J 

have  gathered  thy  children  together,  even 
as  a  hen  gathereth  her  chickens  under 
her  wings,  and  ye  would   not." 

We  come  out  from  morning  to  morn- 
ing to  God's  house.  We  sing  hosannas 
to  Jesus  Christ.  We  claim  him  as  Mas- 
ter. We  entreat  him  to  be  with  us. 
We  hold  the  forms  of  godliness;  but, 
let  us  ask  ourselves,  are  we  holding  the 
forms  of  godliness  and  denying  the  power 
thereof  ?  If  it  is  so,  that  is  the  only  in- 
fidelity that  will  really  wreck  the  world. 
The  infidelity  that  points  out  the  mis- 
takes of  Moses  from  the  public  platform 
will  do  no  harm  if  only,  being  faithful 
and  not  denying  the  power  of  godliness, 
you  do  not  give  wings  to  every  shaft  of 
infidelity.  If  only  you  lift  up  the  cross 
in  a  life  of  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice,  if 
only  you  live  so  that  the  world  will  take 
knowledge  of  you  that  you  have  been 
with  Jesus,  if  only  Christ  is  in  your  life, 
you    need  have  no  fear  of  infidelity,  no 


28  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

fear  for  the  world.  It  is  Gods  world,  and 
he  will  reign  in  it,  even  if  he  turn  and 
overturn  until  our  present  industrial  sit- 
uation, our  organized  Christianity,  our 
political  institutions  are  broken  if  need 
be  into  the  trodden  dust  of  the  ages,  and 
there  come  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness, 
and  Christ  is  King  forever  and  ever. 


II. 

THE   POWER   OF  AN   ENDLESS   LIFE. 

And  what  we  say  is  yet  7nore  abundantly  evident, 
if  after  the  likeness  of  Melchizedek  there  ariseth 
another  priest,  who  hath  been  made,  not  after  the 
law  of  a  carnal  commandment,  but  after  the  power 
of  an  endless  life.  —  Heb.  vii.  15-16. 

'  I  "HIS  chapter  is  not  strictly  an  ar- 
gument in  the  sense  in  which  we 
shall  find  that  word  used  in  our  books  of 
formal  logic.  It  is  rather  a  forcible  illus- 
tration. It  is  from  the  story  of  Melchi- 
zedek, with  which  the  Jewish  imagina- 
tion had  dealt  rather  liberally.  As  all 
easily  recall  the  details  of  that  story,  it  is 
unnecessary  to  dwell  upon  the  various 
conceptions  that  grew  up  in  the  later 
Jewish  history  around  this  symbolic 
figure.  Melchizedek  greets  Abraham. 
Abraham     acknowledges    him    as   priest 


3<D  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

and  king,  and  pays  him  tithes  for  some 
reason  that  is  unknown  to  us.  That  he 
was  a  worshipper  of  the  same  God  that 
Abraham  acknowledged,  that  Abraham 
in  some  way  or  other  was  desirous  of 
acknowledging  either  his  moral  or  reli- 
gious supremacy,  is  undoubted.  Beyond 
that  it  is  not  useful  for  us  to  go.  As  an 
illustration  this  story  has  great  weight, 
for  the  writer  to  the  Hebrews  has  ex- 
plained at  considerable  length  to  those 
to  whom  he  was  writing  that  the  Jewish 
religion  had  not  passed  away,  that  they 
did  not  of  necessity  break  with  the  na- 
tional Judaism  when  they  accepted  Chris- 
tianity. All  that  had  passed  away  was 
the  form,  and  that  had  absolutely  passed 
away.  Now  there  was  a  better  revela- 
tion,—  not  a  new  revelation,  but  a  better 
and  higher  revelation  of  that  very  thing 
toward  which  Judaism  had  been  only 
pointing.  The  argument  of  the  book 
centres   around  that  one  thought.     The 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  3 1 

writer  also  points  out  that  the  real  priest- 
hood was  not  bound  up  with  lineal 
descent ;  that  the  priesthood  existed  inde- 
pendently of  the  forms  of  Judaism ;  that 
such  a  priesthood,  whatever  its  change 
in  character,  was  ever  the  same  in  its 
essential  religious  meaning,  —  that  it 
was  in  fact  the  priesthood  established  in 
Christ,  who,  he  says,  is  a  priest  after  the 
order  of  Melchizedek. 

Now  what  distinguishes  this  non- 
Judaic  priesthood  ?  It  was  the  isolated 
character  of  Melchizedek  in  bold  anti- 
thesis to  the  Jewish  priestly  family ;  and 
it  is  to  this  antithesis  between  the  real 
and  the  symbolic,  between  the  temporal 
and  the  eternal,  that  the  author  directs 
our  attention.  Christ  is  claimed  as  priest, 
not  of  law,  but  of  power;  not  of  carnal 
commandment,  but  after  the  power  of  an 
endless  life.  Here  there  are  contrasts, 
—  law  as  over  against  power,  law  being 
only  the  expression,  in  many  cases  indeed 


32  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

only  the  temporary  expression  of  power. 
Power  must  be  behind  law.  The  law 
may  change.  Indeed,  because  power 
only  can  last,  therefore  the  law  must 
change.  This  is  a  fact  familiar  to  every 
historical  jurist. 

And  not  after  a  carnal  commandment 
is  Christ  a  priest, — a  carnal  command- 
ment having  to  do  simply  with  circumstan- 
ces which  are  temporal  and  changing,  — 
but  after  the  power  of  an  indissoluble  life. 
This  is  the  uniqueness  that  is  claimed  for 
Christ,  that  he  is  the  power  that  passe th 
not  away,  —  "  Jesus  Christ,  the  same  yes- 
terday, to-day  and  forever,"  a  priest  not 
after  a  carnal  commandment,  not  after 
law,  but  after  the  power  of  an  endless 
life.  I  believe  if  we  could  only  fix  that 
contrast  in  our  minds  it  would  give  us 
light  upon  some  of  the  things  that  puzzle 
and  perplex  us.  We  should  sometimes 
fail  indeed  to  separate  between  the  tem- 
poral and  eternal  elements,  but  we  should 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  33 

not  be  discouraged  because  we  thus 
failed.  There  are  some  marked  phenom- 
ena of  life  that  might  be  more  easily 
explained  to  us  if  we  would  remember 
this  contrast  between  power  and  the  ex- 
pression of  it.  Take  for  instance  the 
religions,  even  those  which  are  beyond 
the  pale  of  the  immediate  revelation 
granted  to  us  in  Christ.  Surely  there 
we  may  see  something  of  this  power 
which  cannot  be  identified  with  the  forms 
which  we  have  come  to  recognize  as  weak, 
imperfect,  and  temporary.  Of  course, 
I  cannot  speak  of  the  natural  religions 
from  the  standpoint  of  one  that  knows 
them  thoroughly ;  I  can  only  take  the 
testimony  of  those  who  are  competent  to 
judge,  as  I  am  not.  Take,  for  instance, 
the  testimony  concerning  Buddhism.  It 
is  useless  for  us  to  deny  the  power  that 
Buddhism  has  had  over  men's  lives.  It 
started     very    much     as     Protestantism 

started,  as  a  reaction  against  the  formal- 
3 


34  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

ity  and  corruption  of  the  older  Brah- 
manism.  Buddhism  started  as  a  reform, 
with  no  intention  of  breaking  away  from 
Brahmanism,  with  no  intention  of  doing 
more  than  instilling  into  the  older  reli- 
gion a  force  and  vitality  which  it  was 
only  too  evident  it  had  lost.  Now,  the 
forms  in  which  Buddhism  comes  to  us 
are  most  evidently  immaterial.  Its  phi- 
losophy has  changed  so  completely  that 
the  schools  of  Buddhism  are  as  numerous 
as  the  schools  of  Protestantism.  All  that 
is  outward  finds  the  greatest  variety 
exhibited  in  its  development.  It  is,  of 
course,  an  easy  explanation  of  its  power 
to  say  that  it  was  born  of  the  devil ;  that 
was  the  older  Christian  explanation,  but 
the  ideas  and  spirit  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment teach  us  to  understand  more  prop- 
erly the  influence  it  has  had  over  mens 
lives.  Certainly  its  power  was  not  in 
that  it  was  a  popular  proclamation.  It 
was  not  a  mystic  dream.     Its  power  was 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  35 

not  in  pandering  to  men's  appetites.  It 
preached  sternly  at  all  times  upon  a  very 
high  and  noble  level  the  doctrine  of  self- 
sacrifice  and  self-abnegation.  Nor  did  it 
hold  out  certain  popular  dreams,  certain 
hopes  that  men  would  readily  grasp  after. 
It  did  nothing  of  the  kind.  It  never 
tempted  men  with  dreams  of  a  paradise 
in  exchange  for  the  life  here.  Its  insist- 
ence  was  upon  a  life  of  righteousness  here 
and  now,  and  it  held  out  as  almost  the 
only  hope  for  the  future  an  escape  from 
the  evils  incident  to  the  life  that  is  now. 

Take,  on  the  other  hand,  the  religion 
of  Mohammed.  Again  we  see  that  there 
is  something  that  must  be  deeper  than 
the  forms  of  Mohammedanism,  for  these 
forms  we  have  come  to  recognize  as 
weak  and  imperfect.  Now  it  is  a  very 
easy  explanation  of  Mohammedanism  to 
say  that  it  was  advanced  by  the  power  of 
the  sword.  But  did  you  ever  know  of 
another  instance  where  a  nation  of  drunk- 


36  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

ards  and  gamblers  was  made  moral  by 
any  temporal  power?  If  so,  I  wish  very 
much  that  Mohammed's  sword  could  be 
unsheathed  in  America.  It  is  a  very  easy 
explanation  of  the  power  of  Mohammed- 
anism to  say  that  it  was  the  genius  of 
one  man.  If  that  is  true,  how  is  it  to  be 
explained  that  the  genius  of  Mohammed 
gave  birth  to  a  long  succession  of  men  of 
genius,  on  the  very  lines  of  Mohammed's 
power,  that,  for  instance,  it  should  pro- 
duce a  Saladin,  who  showed  himself  a 
nobler  man  than  most  of  his  Christian 
opponents?  It  is  a  comparatively  easy 
explanation  to  say  that  the  wild  hopes 
of  a  temporal  paradise  tempted  men  to 
be  moral.  The  experience  of  human  life 
is  that  men  are  not  tempted  to  morality 
by  any  such  means.  We  must  recognize, 
if  we  are  honest,  that  behind  all  that  is 
temporary  and  weak  and  imperfect  in 
Judaism,  in  Mohammedanism,  in  Bud- 
dhism,   in    any   of    the    religions    whose 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  37 

forms  we  have  come  to  recognize  as  in- 
efficient, there  is  something  that  needs  to 
be  revealed  more  perfectly,  to  be  known 
and  grasped  at  fully,  if  we  would  have 
the  explanation  of  the  religious  life,  and 
the  power  of  that  religious  life  over  the 
characters  and  hopes  of  men. 

We  see  in  church  history  something 
of  the  dangers  of  forgetting  the  human 
character  of  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord.  We 
see  some  of  the  perils  that  come  from  a 
too  sharp  separation  of  his  humanity  from 
our  humanity.  Nothing  could  be  more 
profitable  for  us  than  to  dwell  from  time 
to  time,  with  anxious  thought  for  God's 
blessing  as  we  do  so,  upon  what  is  the 
real  power  of  Christ's  life  as  he  presents 
himself  to  us  as  the  explanation,  not  of 
Judaism  only,  but  as  the  explanation  of 
all  religion  wherever  found,  as  the  full 
revelation  and  incarnation  of  that  after 
which  we  have  been  feeling,  the  full 
revelation   of   the   power   of   an  endless 


38  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE, 

life  over  men's  fallen  ambitions  and  fallen 
hopes,  the  power  that  raises  men  from 
the  dead  and  brings  life  again  to  the  sick 
and  weary.  And  the  power  is  not  after 
a  carnal  commandment,  not  after  the 
laws  of  the  past,  but  it  is  the  power  of 
an  endless  life  revealed  in  the  person  of 
our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ. 

This  power  of  an  endless  life  has  not 
always  been  understood,  and  men  have 
often  sought  to  explain  it  in  such  a  way 
that  they  have  succeeded  in  explaining 
it  away.  Men  have  tried  to  reduce  Chris- 
tianity to  a  very  high  code  of  morals. 
Well,  it  is  that.  As  soon  as  we  are  liv- 
ing upon  the  level  of  the  sermon  on  the 
mount  the  Kingdom  of  God  will  be  very 
nigh  unto  us.  But  it  is  not  that  only. 
The  Stoic  philosophy  gave  us  a  code  of 
morals  in  many  ways  to  be  compared 
with  the  code  in  the  New  Testament. 
The  code  of  Confucius  does  not  fall  very 
far  short  in  the  formal  directions  of  life 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  39 

from  those  of  Christ.  If  Christianity 
were  only  a  code  of  morals,  if  it  were 
only  the  direction  of  what  you  and  I 
should  do  and  should  leave  undone, 
Christianity  would  not  have  had  the 
power  over  men's  hearts  and  lives  that 
it  has  had ;  it  would  not  have  led  to 
right  doing  in  the  way  it  has  done  when- 
ever faithfully  proclaimed  and  accepted. 
There  must  be  some  deeper  and  more 
abiding  explanation  of  the  power  of  the 
Christian  religion  over  men's  hearts  and 
lives  than  the  explanation  that  would  re- 
duce it  simply  to  a  series  of  "  Thou  shalt 
not,"  and  "  Thou  shalt  do  this."  It  is  not 
and  never  has  been  a  mere  code  of  morals. 
Some  have  sought  to  find  this  power 
in  its  wonderful  reviving  of  philosophy. 
But  as  a  matter  of  fact  Christianity  did 
not  revive  philosophy.  It  only  revived 
certain  phases  of  Greek  philosophy,  and 
then  often  to  Christianity's  own  great 
disadvantage.     Again  and    again    Chris- 


40  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

tianity  has  been  explained  away  with  a 
certain  deliberateness  of  purpose  by  seek- 
ing to  identify  it  in  its  essence  with  that 
which  any  one  may  see  to  have  been  but 
passing  phases  of  a  decadent  Greek  spirit. 
Its  power  is  not  there.  Its  power  has 
been  felt  there.  Its  power  has  been  felt 
even  in  these  decadent  phases  of  Greek 
thought,  but  it  is  not  to  be  identified 
with  them  in  any  sense ;  for  Christianity 
is  more  than  a  philosophy,  it  is  more 
than  a  system,  it  is  more  than  a  tradition, 
it  is  more  than  an  organization,  it  is  more 
than  law,  it  is  the  power  of  an  endless 
life. 

The  great  mistake  of  some  of  the  early 
centuries  was  to  identify  the  Church 
with  an  organization,  to  make  its  power 
felt  only  through  an  organization ;  and 
some,  particularly  one  historian,  who  has 
exercised  great  influence  over  the  think- 
ing of  the  English  people,  have  sought 
to  show  how  by  just  coming  at  the  right 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  41 

time  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  was  able 
to  subsidize  the  forms  of  an  organization 
already  existing,  and  use  it  for  its  own 
purposes.  If  this  explanation  of  the 
power  of  Christianity  is  true,  it  is  a  very 
strange  circumstance  that  it  was  able 
thus  to  appropriate  to  itself  so  powerful 
an  organization  ;  some  explanation  is  due 
us  as  to  how  the  lesser  thus  swallowed 
up  the  greater.  But  a  little  careful  study, 
I  think,  will  show  you  that  though  this 
organization  was  used  by  Christianity  to 
a  large  degree,  Christianity  used  it  to  her 
great  and  permanent  disadvantage ;  and 
far  from  identifying  Christianity  with  the 
Roman  power  which  it  subsidized,  far 
from  seeking  its  explanation  in  the  power 
of  that  empire  which  it  overthrew,  we  are 
to  find  in  the  very  fact  that  it  did  too 
closely  identify  itself  with  this  falling 
civilization  the  weakness  which  overtook 
it  and  wellnigh  led  to  its  absorption  in 
the  Middle  Ages. 


42  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

Christianity  is  more  than  the  visible 
church.  It  is  greater  than  the  Roman 
Empire  ;  for  the  church  had  influence 
over  men's  hearts  that  the  Roman  Em- 
pire could  not  exercise.  Christianity  is 
centred  in  the  divinity  of  its  founder;  it 
is  centred  in  the  fact  that  the  Divine 
Life  became  incarnate.  It  has  as  its  real 
secret  the  fact  that  there  has  arisen  an- 
other priest,  who  hath  been  made,  not 
after  a  carnal  commandment,  but  after 
the  power  of  an  endless  life.  It  is  this 
incarnation  as  a  common  meeting  ground 
between  humanity  and  God  that  gives 
Christianity  its  uniqueness.  This  un- 
iqueness does  not  consist  in  certain 
transcendental  abstractions  or  metaphy- 
sical distinctions.  The  uniqueness  of 
Christianity  consists  first  in  the  insepar- 
ableness  of  Christ  from  humanity,  and, 
second,  in  the  inseparableness  of  Christ 
from  Divinity ;  and  on  this  common 
ground  between  God  and  man  the  divine 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  43 

within  us  finds  its  expression  in  Jesus 
Christ,  the  power  of  an  endless  life. 

If  you  have  followed  the  argument,  I 
wonder  if  you  will  be  prepared  to  pass 
with  me  to  some  of  the  more  particular 
applications  of  that  truth  to  the  life  that 
is  about  us.  One  of  the  difficulties  of 
all  statement  is  that  it  may  be  made  so 
abstract  that  having  made  it  and  written 
it  down  we  close  it  up  and  put  it  away 
upon  our  library  shelves.  But  if  it  is 
really  true,  if  there  is  really  a  power  of 
an  endless  life,  then  it  is  for  you  and  me 
to  come  under  its  influence,  —  to  feel  it 
ourselves,  and  make  it  a  power  felt  in  all 
life. 

Because  there  are  so  many  substitutes 
for  this  power  of  an  endless  life,  it  is 
difficult  for  weak  faith  to  grasp  it  and  to 
translate  it  into  life.  There  is  a  substi- 
tute found  in  a  certain  intellectual  de- 
structiveness.  We  are  soaked  with  the 
critical  spirit,  we  revel  in  pulling  things 


44  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

to  pieces  to  see  what  is  inside ;  and  in 
the  process  of  our  analysis  we  feel  keenly 
that  triumphant  sense  that  the  little  child 
feels  when  she  has  torn  her  doll  to  pieces 
and  finds  the  saw-dust  running  out.  We 
find  ourselves  exulting  over  the  things 
we  are  analyzing.  No  man  can  take  a 
life,-  or  a  character,  or  a  history,  or  a 
church,  or  a  doctrine,  or  a  creed,  and 
analyze  it,  without  putting  himself  in  a 
certain  position  of  judge  as  over  against 
it ;  and  in  that  exalted  position,  even 
though  it  is  assumed  by  himself,  he  is  apt 
to  find  a  certain  satisfaction  and  pride, 
which  may  lead  him  far  astray.  In  our 
present  age  there  is  this  air  of  critical 
analysis,  of  intellectual  destructiveness, 
of  refined  culture,  and  we  are  apt  to 
boast  ourselves  that  we  have  found  at 
last  some  kind  of  substitute  for  this 
power  of  which  we  hear  so  much  down 
the  ages,  and  which  the  Nineteenth 
Century    would    like    exceedingly  to  do 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  45 

without  Well,  we  can  do  without  it 
possibly  for  a  little  while,  but  not  very 
long.  No  age  can  do  without  it  and  do 
its  work.  It  is  the  one  thing  worth  hav- 
ing, all  else  fades  in  significance  in  rela- 
tion to  it.  The  power  of  an  endless  life 
alone  brings  all  things  into  their  proper 
proportions.  It  shows  the  weakness  of 
mere  critical  analysis  that,  after  we  have 
pulled  our  doll  to  pieces,  we  find  our- 
selves sobbing  over  the  ruins,  face  to  face 
still  with  the  problems  of  death  and  dis- 
solution, face  to  face  still  with  shame  and 
unrighteousness  and  iniquity  and  op- 
pression, our  hearts  still  unsatisfied; 
and  we  wonder  if  life  is  only  this,  —  only 
the  satisfaction  of  pulling  to  pieces  the 
things  that  have  pleased  us  for  a  moment, 
and  then  leaving  them,  and  going  out 
forever  and  forever  without  hope  and 
without  God  in  the  world.  There  is 
nothing  that  we  need  so  much  as  to  get 
away  from    our   abstractions,   our  meta- 


46  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

physics,  our  analysis  and  our  culture, 
and  come  face  to  face  with  the  realities 
of  things ;  and  in  our  heart  of  hearts  we 
know,  from  the  fact  that  it  has  had  real 
influence  in  our  lives,  that  there  is  a 
power  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  that  there  is  a 
power  of  an  endless  life,  that  unless  we 
feel  it  and  know  it,  unless  it  throbs  in 
our  life,  life  is  a  failure. 

There  is  another  substitute  which  I 
think  is  not  less  a  real  temptation.  It  is 
found  less  in  the  cogitations  than  in  the 
active  lives  of  men  round  about  us.  It 
comes,  I  think,  more  vividly  into  the 
foreground  on  the  Fourth  of  July  and 
Washington's  birthday,  and  other  great 
occasions  for  parading  the  wonderful 
prosperity  and  material  advancement  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century,  and  more  par- 
ticularly our  portion  of  it.  Let  me  call 
it  the  commercial  antichrist,  —  the  sense 
in  men's  hearts,  that  religion  is  a  very 
good  thing  in   its   way,    but    that    there 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  47 

are  primary  ends  first  to  be  reached ; 
that  there  is  after  all  a  real  power  in  the 
world,  and  that  is  the  power  of  material 
prosperity,  which  has  to  be  attended  to 
first.  Then  again,  this  heresy  tells  us 
that  men  cannot  conduct  their  business 
unless  they  do  this  or  that,  and  the  prin- 
cipal thing  is  to  conduct  our  business. 
We  have  great  confidence  in  ourselves 
that  once  having  attained  our  end,  then 
we  can  open  the  doors  of  heaven  with 
our  gold  and  bribe  the  Almighty  with 
our  successes ;  we  will  give  him  churches 
and  asylums  and  colleges,  and  leave  him 
large  legacies  in  our  wills.  There  is 
nothing  that  we  need  to  come  face  to 
face  with  more  than  this,  —  that  the  wor- 
ship of  the  commercial  antichrist  is  eat- 
ing the  hearts  and  lives  out  of  men,  and 
that  that  worship  must  pass  away,  and 
that  only  when  it  has  passed  away  shall 
we  know  in  its  fulness  what  is  the  power 
of  an  endless  life.     For  all  things  pass 


48  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

away.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  the  cos- 
mic  stream  of  prosperity  only  to  find 
that  our  imperishable  gold  slips  away. 
You  treasure  it  up,  and  those  who  are 
most  dear  to  you  are  corrupted  and 
damned  by  it.  You  have  worshipped  it, 
and  the  image  you  have  worshipped  has 
fallen  upon  and  crushed  you.  You  have 
bowed  to  men  for  its  sake,  and  they  have 
turned  upon  you  and  accused  you  of  the 
things  they  are  doing  themselves  every 
day,  because  they  dread  the  exposure 
which  has  come  to  you ;  and  so  shame 
and  cursing:  have  ever  come  because  men 
know  not  the  power  of  an  endless  life. 

This  is  what  we  need  to  know ;  and  if 
anything  can  teach  it  to  us  it  would  be  a 
short  review  of  the  history  we  have  been 
sketching.  "  All  things  pass  away,"  says 
the  writer  to  the  Hebrews ;  nothing  can 
be  trusted,  all  things  pass  away.  Only 
one  thing  remains,  "  Jesus  Christ,  the 
same    yesterday,    to-day,     and    forever." 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  49 

Over  against   Jerusalem    he   stood,  and 
Jerusalem  condemned  him,  and  stretched 
him  on  the  cross,  and  said,  "  Ha  !  ha !  we 
have  done  once  and  for  all  with  this  de- 
ceiver, we  have  nailed  him  upon  a  cross 
of  shame."     Jerusalem   passed    into    his- 
tory, and  Christ  into  history  to  make  but 
more  manifest  the  power  of  an  endless 
life.    The  Romans  took  his  followers  and 
made  torches  of  them  to  light  their  gar- 
dens.    The  power  of  Rome  passed  away, 
but  the  torches  that  lit  their  gardens  sent 
their  light   into  the  farthest   North,  re- 
claiming men  to  righteousness,  and  even 
barbarianism  in  all  its  brutality  and  igno- 
rance felt  the  power  of  this  endless  life. 
The    Middle    Ages   said   to    themselves, 
"  We    have    found    the    last    analysis ! " 
They  too  failed  of  their  high  aims ;  and 
when  brave   monks  spoke  up  they  cast 
them  from  their  synagogues,  and  haughty 
Rome   sat   a   queen    in    her   power  and 
laughed  at  the  troublesome  monks  quar- 


50  TOWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

relling  in  their  cells.  But  the  power  of 
an  endless  life  made  itself  manifest  not 
only  in  the  Protestant  North,  it  shook 
even  Catholic  Rome,  and  called  her 
to  face  the  bitter  fact  that  if  she  would 
not  be  destroyed  she  must  hearken 
to  the  voice  of  God.  She  hearkened, 
and  God  spared  her.  He  is  speaking 
yet,  and  Protestantism  and  Catholicism 
have  both  to  hear  his  voice  in  sorrowing 
rebuke  that  they  do  not  realize  that  the 
power  of  all  the  past  is  this  same  power, 
"  Jesus  Christ,  the  same  yesterday,  to-day, 
and  forever ;  "  a  priest  not  after  a  carnal 
commandment,  not  after  the  intellectual 
destructiveness  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, not  in  accordance  with  our  phi- 
losophies, not  in  accordance  with  the 
traditions  of  our  ecclesiasticism,  not  in 
accordance  with  our  refinements  in  the 
religious  life,  not  in  accordance  with  our 
industrial  wrongs,  but  after  the  real 
power  that  is  within  every  man  that  sub- 


POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE.  5 1 

mits  himself,  crying  aloud  to  his  God  to 
make  known  the  righteousness  that  is  in 
Christ  Jesus,  that  our  lives  with  all  their 
emptiness  and  poorness  may  be  hidden 
in  the  life  that  is  in  Jesus  Christ.  As 
we  look  into  his  face  sometimes  it  seems 
to  us  there  must  be  on  that  marred  vis- 
age a  look  of  bitterness  and  despair  that 
we  should  have  denied  him  thrice  as  we 
have  done ;  but  he  still  pleads  with  us  if 
we  only  will  hear  his  voice,  saying  to  us, 
"  Come  unto  me,  and  find  rest  for  your 
souls,"  and  know  that  through  his  cross, 
his  self-sacrifice,  his  self-denial,  his  right- 
eousness is  the  full  and  free  forgiveness 
of  our  God,  and  that  forgiving  love  is  the 
power  of  an  endless  life. 


III. 

CHRIST  MADE   PERFECT. 

Who,  .  .  .  though  he  was  a  Son,  yet  learned  obe- 
dience by  the  things  which  he  suffered ;  and  hav- 
ing been  made  perfect,  he  became  unto  all  them  that 
obey  him  the  author  of  eternal  salvation.  —  Heb.  v. 
8,9. 

rFHE  fulness  of  God's  revelation  is 
such,  and  our  capacity  is  so  limited, 
that  every  age  and  every  generation,  cer- 
tainly every  epoch,  has  new  light  from 
heaven  upon  the  path  that  man  has  made 
dark.  We  ought  ever  to  be  learning 
more  of  the  way  of  God.  We  should  be 
ever  seeking:  the  revelation  that  God  is 
ever  willing  to  grant  in  his  Church,  in 
history,  in  our  reasoning  faculties,  in  the 
study  of  his  Scripture.  There  is,  indeed, 
the  danger  that,  on  the  one  hand,  all  that 


CHRIST    MADE    PERFECT.  53 

is  old  may  have  such  attraction  for  us 
that  we  shall  refuse  to  enter  into  the  new, 
and  thus  miss  much  of  the  revelation  of 
our  God  ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  that  we 
may  be  so  charmed  with  the  novelties 
that  we  shall  forget  the  continuity  of 
God's  revelation,  and  in  seeking  these 
new  things  have  only  one-sided  views  of 
truth. 

We  must  therefore  seek  constantly  the 
truth  in  that  which  is  old,  and  holding 
fast  the  profession  of  our  faith,  press 
forward  into  that  which  is  new  indeed 
to  our  thinking,  but  old  to  the  eternal 
wisdom  of  our  God.  The  process  is  the 
same  as  spiritual  process  is  everywhere. 
Truth  is  borne  in  upon  us  ;  then  we  begin 
to  think  about  it,  then  we  try  to  express 
ourselves.  When  truth  is  borne  in  upon 
us  in  the  first  instance,  we  are  very  likely 
to  be  overwhelmed  and  confused  ;  there 
is  more  light  than  we  can  walk  in.  There 
falls  on  us  that  same  darkness  and  con- 


54  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

fusion  in  the  very  midst  of  the  glare  of 
the  light  that  seems  to  have  fallen  upon 
the  disciples,  and  for  a  little  while  they 
needed  to  draw  aside  that  they  might 
rightly  consider  this  new  thought  which 
had  been  unfolded  to  them.  The  process, 
then,  of  analysis  finds  our  spirits  often 
in  the  critical  mood.  The  moment  we 
begin  to  express  the  things  that  God  has 
been  seeking  to  reveal  to  us,  we  find  our 
words  quite  inadequate  for  the  purpose. 
So  it  is  rather  the  expression  of  the  truth 
that  is  progressive  than  the  revelation 
itself ;  rather  that  our  capacity  for  seiz- 
ing upon  it  develops  gradually  than  that 
God  is  giving  us  more  and  more  light, 
though  that  may  also  be  said  to  be  true. 

The  same  thing  is  true  in  all  art  ex- 
pression. You  no  doubt  have  had  feel- 
ings that  you  would  fain  have  expressed, 
it  may  be  of  deep  depression,  of  melan- 
choly. You  find  your  words  inadequate  ; 
but  some  one  brings  to   your   notice  a 


CHRIST    MADE    PERFECT.  55 

poem  by  some  masterhand,  and  he  not 
only  expresses  the  feeling  in  your  heart 
that  was  seeking  a  voice,  but  he  reveals 
to  you  a  higher  self,  and  deeper  feelings, 
of  which  you  had  only  been  either  dimly 
conscious  or  wholly  unconscious  until 
the  artist  revealed  them  to  you. 

But  even  words  have  their  limits. 
And  so  it  may  be  that  a  picture  grasps 
at  your  thought  and  expresses  it  as  even 
words  cannot.  Take,  for  instance,  such 
a  poem  as  that  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe's 
"  The  Raven ;  "  place  it  alongside  the 
marvellous  print  from  the  hand  of  Diirer 
of  "  Melancholia,"  and  see  how  the  pic- 
ture and  poem  answer  one  to  the  other, 
expressing  tones  and  feelings  of  your 
thought  that  neither  is  able  wholly  to 
articulate.  Even  here  there  seems  to  be 
a  limit;  but  you  chance  to  come  where 
music  is  being  played.  Here  words  and 
picture  are  supplemented  with  the  tones 
of  the  instruments.    Your  spirit  is  caught 


56  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

up,  and  the  minor  chord  that  sings 
through  the  refrain  answers  back  to 
your  spirit,  and  you  rejoice  that  not 
only  your  emotions  find  expression,  but 
that  there  has  been  revealed  to  you  per- 
chance the  meaning  and  secret  that  is 
behind  all  emotion,  so  that  your  better 
and  nobler  self  finds  itself  in  the  artistic 
expression  of  the  moment. 

So  also  on  a  higher  plane  is  it  true  of 
God's  revelation  of  himself  in  the  person 
of  Jesus  Christ.  There  was  very  little 
danger  that  the  disciples  would  forget 
the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ ;  there  was 
great  danger  that  the  world  would  do 
that.  The  danger  was  rather  that  the 
disciples  would  forget  his  humanity,  and 
that  danger  Christ  seems  to  have  fore- 
seen all  through  his  ministry.  It  is  his 
Sonship,  it  is  his  manhood,  it  is  his  limi- 
tations that  he  emphasizes  in  the  midst 
of  his  devoted  followers.  How  far  he 
saw  ipto  history,  church  history  tells  you. 


CHRIST    MADE    PERFECT.  57 

It  was  not  his  divinity,  but  his  human- 
ity that  the  Church  forgot,  and  having 
forgotten  and  laid  it  aside,  the  painted 
image  of  the  child,  the  Virgin  Mary,  or 
the  saints  had  to  take  the  place  that  was 
thus  vacated,  as  revelations  to  man  of 
that  link  between  him  and  the  divinity 
which  he  sought,  but  could  truly  find  only 
in  the  person  of  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ. 
And  so  through  many  ages  of  church 
history  there  was  steadily  lacking  the 
due  emphasis  upon  this,  the  real  human- 
ity of  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ.  Christ 
is  the  revelation  not  only  of  God  to  man, 
but  of  man  to  his  better  self.  Jesus 
Christ  is  not  only  the  fulness  of  the 
Fatherhood  revealed,  he  is  also  equally 
emphatically  a  revelation  of  manhood  as 
it  ought  to  be,  the  ideal  of  those  things 
for  which  in  our  better  moments,  when 
the  Spirit  of  God  is  moving  upon  our 
spirits,  we  long  to  know  and  search  after, 
feeling  that  these  things  are  eternal  life. 


58  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

Christ's  humanity  is  emphasized  all 
through  the  New  Testament.  It  is 
not  simply  in  his  own  words.  We  find 
throughout  the  writings  of  Paul  and  of 
John,  throughout  this  letter  to  the  He- 
brews by  an  unknown  author,  through- 
out the  whole  literature  of  the  New 
Testament,  a  constant  emphasis  upon 
the  absolute  humanity  of  our  blessed 
Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ.  He 
grew  in  wisdom ;  he  knew  not  the  times 
and  seasons  ;  he  did  his  miracles  by  the 
authority  of  his  Father ;  he  thanked  his 
Father  that  he  had  been  heard  when  he 
cried  to  him  before  the  tomb  of  Lazarus  ; 
he  knew  his  Father  was  able  to  save  him 
from  death,  and  cried  out  in  the  bitter- 
ness of  his  agony,  "  If  it  be  possible,  let 
this  cup  pass  from  me  ! "  and  he  yielded 
his  will  to  the  will  of  his  Father,  "  Not  as 
I  will,  but  as  thou  wilt."  And  so  we 
have  Paul  emphasizing  the  fact  that  he 
took  upon  himself  the  form  of  a  servant, 


CHRIST    MADE    PERFECT.  59 

that  he  emptied  himself  and  became 
man  that  he  might  enter  into  our  hopes 
and  fears  ;  that  he  might  enter  into  the 
very  temptations,  into  your  sorrows  and 
my  sorrows,  and  bleed  with  our  bleeding 
hearts,  and  weep  with  our  tears ;  that 
he  might  reveal  unto  us  that  better 
nature,  that  higher  and  diviner  life,  which 
has  been  clouded  by  our  sinfulness,  and 
can  only  be  recovered  by  faith. 

We  find  no  stronger  assertion  of  this 
absolute  humanity  than  we  do  here  in 
this  letter  to  the  Hebrews,  and  it  is  to 
this  particular  clause  that  I  shall  ask 
your  more  especial  attention.  "  Who  .  .  . 
though  he  was  a  son,  yet  learned  obedi- 
ence by  the  things  which  he  suffered  ; 
and  having  been  made  perfect,  he  became 
unto  all  them  that  obey  him  the  author 
of  eternal  salvation." 

If  any  one  were  to  ask  you  what 
the  value  of  your  life  was,  I  have  no 
doubt    at    all     there    would    be    many 


60  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

responses  of  a  different  nature  by  those 
who  frankly  answered.  Some  would  say, 
"  Well,  to  be  honest  and  frank,  the  whole 
concern  of  my  life  just  at  present  is  my 
business.  These  are  times  of  depres- 
sion, and  there  are  many  things  I  have  to 
neglect,  and  this  is  one  thing  I  dare  not 
neglect.  For  my  own  sake,  and  for  the 
sake  of  my  family,  my  business  is  at 
present  my  chief  concern."  Ah  !  then, 
my  friend,  you  are  not  prospering  in 
business,  no  matter  how  much  money 
you  may  be  making.  If  that  is  your 
chief  concern  in  life,  then  life,  indeed, 
has  its  solemn  question  to  you,  Is  that 
life  worth  living  ?  Possibly  you  will  say, 
"  Well,  it  is  not  so  much  my  business  as 
my  family.  I  live  for  my  family ;  they 
must  be  supported  and  cared  for.  This 
is  surely  my  chief  duty ;  I  should  be  worse 
than  infidel  according  to  the  sacred 
writer  if  I  did  not  care  for  those  imme- 
diately  depending   upon    me."     That   is 


CHRIST    MADE    PERFECT.  6 1 

very  true  ;  but  if  this  is  your  chief  con- 
cern, you  are  not  caring  for  them  in  the 
best  possible  way  :  "  He  that  loveth  not 
me  more  than  father  or  mother,  or  sister 
or  brother,  is  not  worthy  of  me."  You 
can  care  best  for  your  family  by  not 
making  it  the  chief  concern  of  your  life. 
You  can  care  best  for  those  whom  you 
love  by  not  making  them  the  real  thing 
for  which  you  are  living.  Some  of  you 
perhaps  would  be  tempted  to  say,  "  It  is 
my  country."  I  suppose,  even  in  Chicago, 
there  would  be  some  found  loyal  enough 
to  feel  that  the  time  of  peace  is  more 
dangerous  for  these  United  States  than 
the  time  of  war.  You  say  in  your  heart 
of  hearts,  "  It  is  my  country  which  is  my 
chief  concern."  O  patriot!  you  cannot 
care  for  your  country  as  you  might  if 
it  is  the  one  thing  for  which  you  are  liv- 
ing. There  is  a  higher  secret  of  life  than 
country  or  family  or  business,  and  that 
higher  secret  can  be  learned  only  in  the 


62  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

study  of   the   life  and  sufferings  of   our 
Saviour  Jesus  Christ. 

Let  us  turn  to  see  what  was  the  secret 
of  his  life.  He  learned  in  it !  That  was 
the  thing  !  You  live  that  you  may  learn. 
You  are  here,  not  to  live  for  yourself,  not 
to  die  for  yourself,  but  to  learn, — to  learn 
the  things  that  you  cannot  learn  from  busi- 
ness or  in  the  home  circle  or  from  your 
country.  You  are  here  to  learn  to  enter 
into  secrets  and  to  find  out  mysteries,  to 
enter  into  the  secret  places  of  the  Most 
High  ;  you  are  here  to  make  something  of 
your  life  ;  you  are  here  to  be  robed  in  a 
robe  of  righteousness  ;  you  are  here  to  find 
out  secrets,  not  for  yourself  only,  but  for 
others,  —  the  high  secrets  of  eternal  wis- 
dom ;  you  are  here  to  learn,  and  unless 
you  are  learning,  though  all  these  other 
things  may  have  their  places  in  the 
school  of  Christ,  may  be  schoolmasters 
to  bring  us  to  Christ,  may  have  even 
eternal   value   as   they   come   into    your 


CHRIST    MADE    PERFECT.  6$ 

life,  yet  unless  they  are  ministers  of 
righteousness,  your  life  is  so  far  forth  a 
failure. 

Is  life  worth  living?  It  depends  upon 
what  description  of  life  it  is.  The  Christ 
life  was  worth  living ;  and  just  so  far  as 
your  life  is  the  Christ  life  it  is  of  value, 
and  just  so  far  as  it  is  not  the  Christ  life 
it  is  of  no  value  whatsoever :  "  If  the  salt 
have  lost  its  savor,  wherewith  shall  it  be 
salted?" 

What  things  did  Christ  learn  ?  He 
learned  obedience,  the  basis  of  noble  char- 
acter. Let  me  venture  a  criticism  upon 
our  American  life  and  say  that  obedience 
is  one  of  the  things  lacking  in  our  life, 
that  we  are  lawless  as  a  people.  We  are 
lawless  in  the  home ;  we  are  lawless  on 
the  street,  and  we  need  as  a  people  to 
learn  obedience  before  we  shall  be  fit 
to  command  as  we  ought.  Some  of  you 
know  what  are  the  exercises  on  the  fen- 
cing floor  or  in  the  boxing-place.     Possi- 


64  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

bly  some  of  you  have  seen  the  weariness 
with  which  the  pupil  constantly  obeys  the 
master's  commands.  Blow  after  blow,  de- 
fence after  defence,  in  barren,  arbitrary 
sequence  :  "  Oh  !  let  me  alone ;  I  can  do 
these  things  now  by  myself."  But  that 
is  not  the  point.  He  must  do  the  thing 
at  once  and  in  the  exact  moment  of  com- 
mand. He  must  do  it  in  obedience  to 
the  master's  ruling,  because  the  master 
knows  that  the  pupil  is  soon  to  stand 
before  one  whose  every  movement  is  a 
command,  whose  every  thrust  must  be 
met  at  once  and  sharply  with  the  proper 
defence.  He  knows  that  the  strife  is 
one  constant  obedience  to  demands  made 
upon  him  from  the  outside,  and  the  pupil 
is  not  fit  to  control  himself,  is  not  fit 
to  command  his  muscles,  until  he  has 
learned  by  absolute  obedience  what  will 
enable  him  in  the  conflict  to  answer  with 
the  proper  defence  every  attack. 

So  at  the  basis  of  all  worthy  character 


CHRIST    MADE    PERFECT.  65 

there  is  this  absolute  obedience ;  and  it 
is  the  only  freedom.  Lawlessness  is  not 
freedom,  license  is  not  freedom ;  license 
is  slavery,  lawlessness  is  worse  than  slav- 
ery. The  only  true  freedom  is  obedience 
to  the  highest,  the  search  after  the  noblest, 
the  surrender  of  all  to  that  which  is  in- 
finite and  eternal  and  unchangeable. 

Christ  came  to  teach  us  obedience. 
And  he  taught  it  to  us  by  learning  obe- 
dience himself  by  the  things  which  he 
suffered.  We  are  a  little  squeamish  now 
about  some  things.  The  doctors  bear 
some  of  the  blame  of  that.  The  pain 
that  they  relieve  us  of  leads  us  to  dread 
any  pain  they  cannot  assuage,  so  that 
the  things  we  bore  once  with  perfect 
ease  now  seem  to  us  large  bugbears.  I 
do  not  know  that  on  the  whole  this  is 
for  evil ;  but,  oh,  friends,  there  is  nothing 
we  need  more  than  to  be  willing  to  bear 
pain  for  others ;  than  the  power  of  sym- 
pathy to  enter  into  the  woes  and  pains  of 
5 


66  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

those  who  are  about  us.  There  is  noth- 
ing that  you  and  I  need  more  than  to  be 
able  to  enter  into  the  world's  agony ;  and 
in  entering  into  it  ours  may  seem  a  very 
hopeless  task ;  but  even  in  the  going  with 
others  into  the  vale  of  darkness,  the 
touch  of  God  through  us  may  help  them 
to  Christ.  The  kind  word  means  more 
than  he  who  speaks  it  can  know,  to  the 
heart  that  is  bowed  down.  There  is  an 
immense  amount  of  pain  in  this  world 
because  from  sheer,  culpable  ignorance 
and  sheer  selfishness  we  cannot  enter 
into  the  woes  of  those  about  us.  We 
need  to  throw  ourselves  into  the  battle 
of  the  world's  tears  and  sorrows ;  we 
need  to  know  something  of  these  bruised 
hearts  in  their  agony ;  we  need  to  weep 
with  those  who  weep,  that  at  last  we  may 
rejoice  with  those  who  rejoice ;  we  need 
to  learn  obedience  through  the  things 
that  we  suffer  ourselves,  that  we  may  be 
able  as  Christ  did  to  enter  into  the  woes 


CHRIST    MADE    PERFECT.  6j 

of  those  who  suffer.  And  so  suffering 
and  pain  have  their  sacred  ministry  ;  and 
Christ  came,  not  to  be  ministered  unto, 
but  to  minister.  He  took  upon  himself 
the  burden  of  the  world's  wild  woe ;  he 
entered  into  the  trials  and  sorrows  of 
this  life  and  was  ground  in  the  mad 
machinery  of  man's  devilish  selfishness, 
bigotry,  and  ignorance.  In  entire  obedi- 
ence to  the  mandates  from  above,  he 
learned  obedience  by  the  things  which 
he  suffered,  and  has  revealed  to  us  a 
higher  manhood,  a  nobler  ideal.  He  has 
taught  us  that  life  is  best  worth  living 
when  we  too  learn  obedience  through 
the  things  which  we  suffer.  He  has 
taught  us  that  it  is  not  in  seeking  our 
own,  nor  in  seeking  to  escape  the  world's 
misery,  nor  in  throwing  off  the  burden  of 
its  woes  and  pains,  but  in  seeking  the 
extrication  of  the  whole  world  from  its 
woe,  that  we  shall  find  our  highest  life 
and  enter  into  the  joy  unspeakable  of  our 
Lord. 


68  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

So  it  was  that  Christ  learned  obedi' 
ence  through  the  things  which  he  suf- 
fered, and  has  become  the  author  of  an 
eternal  salvation.  Oh,  surely  there  is  no 
nobler  epitaph  to  be  written  over  the 
tomb  of  any  one  than  that  he  served  his 
country  and  his  God!  There  is  no  higher 
ideal  of  manhood  than  that  we  enter  into 
the  fulness  of  the  salvation  of  which  Jesus 
Christ  has  become  the  author !  It  would 
be  glorious  simply  to  enter  into  it ;  it 
would  be  more  glorious  to  take  part  in 
the  redemption.  Who  are  we  to  be 
counted  worthy  of  this?  And  yet  Christ 
has  called  us  to  it,  and  we  are  to  fill 
up  in  our  bodies  that  which  is  lacking  of 
the  sufferings  of  Christ  for  his  body's 
sake,  which  is  the  Church.  We  with 
Christ  are  to  become  the  redemption  of 
the  world.  Suffering  as  he  has  taught  us 
to  suffer ;  dying  as  he  has  taught  us  to 
die  ;  living  as  he  lived  ;  walking  with  him  ; 
knowing  what  true  manhood  is  because 


CHRIST    MADE    PERFECT.  69 

he  has  revealed  it  unto  us ;  learning 
obedience  by  the  things  which  we  suffer, 
we  shall  enter  with  him  as  his  brethren, 
called  no  more  his  servants  but  his 
brethren  ;  taking  part  with  those  whom 
his  blood  has  washed  from  their  stains. 
This,  dear  friends,  is  the  meaning  of 
life.  This  is  the  bringing  in  of  the  eter- 
nal salvation.  This  is  the  one  secret 
of  the  establishment  of  Gods  kingdom. 
I  know  not  the  hearts  of  those  before 
me :  who  can  enter  into  the  secret  places 
of  another's  life  ?  But  I  know  enough  of 
life  to  know  that  there  is  no  one  heart 
before  me,  even  the  youngest,  which  has 
not  had  its  woe.  I  know  there  is  no  one 
before  me  to  whom  life  has  not  from  time 
to  time  become  a  weary  entanglement  and 
a  maze  that  seems  hopelessly  ensnarled. 
Dear  friends,  if  life  were  perfectly  plain 
we  should  never  learn ;  we  should  never 
know.  It  is  because  of  this  entangle- 
ment that  we  feel  the  awful    burden  of 


70  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

our  helplessness,  and  groan  within  our- 
selves waiting  for  the  redemption.  To 
you  that  redemption  is  proclaimed. 
"  Freely  ye  have  received,  freely  give." 
God  has  forgiven  you:  walk  in  the  for- 
given life ;  know  him  ;  choose  him  ;  learn 
from  these  very  sufferings,  from  these 
very  mistakes  and  tangled  mysteries,  the 
obedience  that  is  freedom,  the  life  that  is 
eternal  salvation.  May  God  help  us,  and 
grant  us  his  grace  and  his  peace. 


IV. 


THE   IMPULSIVE   TYPE   OF   CHRIS- 
TIANITY. 

Simon,  Simon,  behold,  Satan  asked  to  have  you,  that 
he  ?night  sift  you  as  wheat :  but  I  niade  supplica- 
tion for  thee,  that  thy  faith  fail  not :  and  do  thou, 
when  once  thou  hast  turned  again,  stablish  thy 
brethren.  —  Luke  xxii.  31,  32. 

T7ROM  the  very  fact  that  Christianity  is 
a  life,  we  see  that  it  expresses  itself 
in  a  variety  of  ways.  From  the  very  first 
Christianity  has  been  the  synthesis,  the 
gathering  and  putting  together,  of  a  great 
many  tendencies  and  forces  animated  by 
one  impulse.  From  the  very  first,  differ- 
ent elements  have  entered  into  it ;  some 
to  aid,  some  to  hamper  its  development. 
The  infinite  wisdom  of  God  provided  so 
that  every  variety  of  character,  and  the 
impulses  of  affection,  of  law,  of  intellect, 


72  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

might  all  be  used  for  the  building  up 
and  strengthening  of  his  kingdom  on 
earth.  We  shall  expect,  therefore,  to  find 
throughout  Christian  history,  both  in 
its  beginning  and  in  its  progress,  very 
great  differences  in  types  of  character. 
No  one  man  gathers  into  himself  all  the 
fulness  of  the  revealed  truth.  We  shall 
find  as  we  study  the  biography  of  the 
New  Testament  that  in  a  wonderful  way 
the  various  types  of  character  are  bap- 
tized and  redeemed,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  they  preserve  marvellously  their  in- 
dividual peculiar  characteristics,  bringing 
these  with  them  into  the  service  to  which 
God  has  called  them. 

We  do  not  know  so  much  about  the 
work  that  Peter  did  in  the  early  Church 
as  we  do  concerning  the  work  of  Paul, 
because  the  second  part  of  the  Acts  and 
the  Epistles  of  Paul  are  the  material  upon 
which  we  rely  mainly  for  our  account  of 
the   early  Church,  and    these   of   course 


IMPULSIVE    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       73 

dwell  largely  upon  the  subject  of  Paul's 
labors  and  activities.  But,  at  the  same 
time,  there  is  enough  left  us  to  show  that 
Peter  was  a  very  strong,  a  very  dominant 
element  in  that  part  of  the  Church  which 
centred  around  Jerusalem,  and  which 
influenced  Bithynia  and  the  more  eastern 
parts  of  Asia  Minor. 

The  traditions  about  Peter's  life  are  not 
very  trustworthy.  We  do  not  find  very 
many  traditions  at  all  concerning  him 
until  about  one  hundred  years  after  his 
death  ;  and  then,  although  the  traditions 
are  many,  they  can  be  nearly  all  traced 
back  to  one  source,  so  that  we  have  not 
the  advantage  of  a  great  many  witnesses. 
These  traditions  are  moreover  often  so 
evidently  foolish  and  untrustworthy  that 
it  is  very  difficult  to  build  up  any  scheme 
of  his  Christian  activity  upon  the  basis  of 
them. 

But  we  do  not  need  to  go  to  any  tradi- 
tional story  of  Peter's  life  to  get  a  definite 


74  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

impression  of  the  man.  His  is  one  of  the 
marked  characters  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment's wonderful  series  of  portraits,  tak- 
ing them  merely  as  literature.  It  is 
marvellous  with  what  distinctness  charac- 
ter is  etched  throughout  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments  !  How  many  masterpieces 
we  have  of  character  sketches,  a  few 
words  giving  a  whole  character!  This 
is  true,  for  instance,  of  the  patriarchs.  It 
is  true  also  throughout  the  Old  Testa- 
ment history,  sometimes  the  whole  life 
and  activities  of  a  king  being  gathered 
together  in  two  or  three  verses  in  a  per- 
fectly marvellous  way. 

With  a  few  touches  we  have  Peter's 
character  painted  before  us  with  a  dis- 
tinctness that  it  is  hard  to  find  the  equal 
of  anywhere  in  literature.  Peter  is  a 
man  essentially  of  impulses.  Energetic, 
marvellously  useful  along  these  lines, 
but,  like  a  good  many  impulsive  people, 
not  very  trustworthy,  not  to    be  always 


IMPULSIVE    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       75 

counted  upon.  Peter  is  the  first  to  come 
to  Jesus  walking  upon  the  water,  but 
very  soon  sinks  because  his  faith  gives 
way.  Peter  is  the  very  first  to  draw  his 
sword  in  defence  of  the  Master, — is  the 
only  one  to  spring  to  his  defence,  but 
denies  him  to  the  maid  at  the  door. 
Peter  is  the  first  to  speak,  but  not  always 
the  wisest  when  he  speaks.  Peter  is 
very  ready  to  answer  the  question  as  to 
who  Jesus  is,  —  "  Thou  art  the  Messias," 
but  he  is  also  very  apt  to  take  Christ 
aside  and  rebuke  him,  when  the  Messias 
tells  about  the  suffering  which  lies  before 
him.  Peter  in  his  impulsiveness  will 
not  have  Christ  wash  his  feet,  and  in 
equal  impulsiveness  would  have  him 
wash  his  hands  and  his  head  that  he 
might  be  all  consecrated  to  the  Master's 
service. 

This  is  characteristic  of  Peter  not 
simply  before  Christ's  death ;  but  even 
after  his   death,   in  his  epistles,   we  find 


j6  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

the  same  characteristics.  Peter  is  one 
of  the  very  first  to  try  to  bridge  the  gulf 
between  the  Gentile  and  Jewish  Christian 
churches,  but  one  of  the  very  first  to 
retreat  ignominiously  from  the  position 
he  had  taken,  when  he  is  in  Antioch  sur- 
rounded by  those  who  say  to  him,  "  Thou 
being  a  Jew,  eatest  with  those  who  have 
not  been  circumcised."  And  Paul  with- 
stood him  to  the  face  because  he  was,  in 
his  very  impulsiveness,  in  his  very  super- 
ficiality, in  danger  of  permitting  that  to 
be  done  which  would  have  left  the  Chris- 
tian Church  in  chains,  and  would  have 
hampered  irretrievably  its  progress. 

We  find  that  Peter  is  impulsive ;  and 
yet  we  need  impulsiveness,  and  we  have 
to  take  it  with  its  weakness  and  with  its 
strength.  There  is  an  impulsive  Chris- 
tianity which  is  one  of  the  largest  and 
most  needed  factors  in  the  building  up 
of  the  healthy  Christian  life.  Impulsive 
Christianity  has    indeed  weakness,   with 


IMPULSIVE    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       JJ 

which  we  have  to  reckon.  The  man  of 
impulses  is  a  little  like  the  kindling  with 
which  you  kindle  your  fire.  You  might 
use  a  whole  box  of  matches  in  trying  to 
set  fire  to  the  coals,  and  you  could  not  do 
it.  Take  a  little  kindling,  strike  your 
match,  and  you  soon  have  a  steady  glow. 
It  is  true  you  could  not  very  easily  warm 
your  house  with  kindling,  but  at  the  same 
time  you  could  not  very  easily  warm  your 
house  without  it.  Impulsive  Christian- 
ity is  very  needful  to  set  fire  to  the  forces 
that  are  in  God's  providence  regenerating 
the  world.  Impulsive  Christianity  will 
have  indeed  its  weakness  in  that  like 
Peter  it  is  very  much  in  danger  of  deny- 
ing the  Master.  The  man  of  impulses  is 
very  apt  to  find  himself  stranded  by 
waves  of  a  strength  he  has  not  taken 
accurate  reckoning  of ;  but,  at  the  same 
time,  every  great  religious  movement  has 
commenced  with  the  fiery,  impulsive  ele- 
ments   of   the    community.     It    was    the 


78  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

impulsive  Cornish  miners  who  gave  the 
key-note  to  the  evangelical  revival  whose 
blessed  force  is  not  ended  yet.  It  was 
the  impulsive  classes  in  North  Germany 
that  caught  fire  first  when  a  lonely  monk 
defied  the  Romish  power  and  proclaimed 
liberty  to  the  captive.  It  was  the  impul- 
sive classes  in  this  country  who  heard  the 
preaching  of  Finney,  who  accepted  him 
with  all  his  extravagance,  with  all  his 
weaknesses,  with  all  his  want  of  accurate 
thought.  They  accepted  him  because 
they  felt  his  was  a  message  from  on  high, 
that  touched  men's  hearts  with  some- 
thing better  than  the  old  dogmatism  on 
which  the  Church  was  starving  herself  to 
death,  a  message  that  set  this  country  on 
fire  ;  and  after  it  was  set  on  fire,  there 
were  steadier  forces  to  complete  and 
carry  on  the  movement  to  a  better  and 
higher  issue,  out  of  which  has  come  so 
much  that  has  meaning  for  our  national 
and  individual  life. 


IMPULSIVE    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       79 

We  shall  have  to  take  the  impulsive 
man  and  impulsive  Christianity  into  ac- 
count because  they  form  a  large  element 
even  of  the  most  reflective  life.  We 
would  not  give  anything  for  a  man  who 
did  not  have  impulses,  even  though  they 
were  not  always  wise.  We  would  not  care 
to  have  even  a  wise  man  as  our  dearest 
friend,  if  a  cold,  calculating  intellect  was 
all  you  had  to  deal  with.  Impulses,  even 
if  sometimes  they  are  wrong,  if  some- 
times they  do  disturb  our  judgment,  so 
that  our  emotions  get  the  better  of  our 
calculations,  are  divine  factors  in  char- 
acter building.  Our  calculations  are  not 
infallible  any  more  than  our  impulses, 
and  sometimes  it  is  a  good  thing  to  give 
our  emotions  free  scope,  and  learn  from 
mistakes  to  guide  them  better,  but  not  to 
suppress  them. 

We  have  to  take  into  account  impulses 
because  they  are  a  force  for  good  or  for 
evil.      There  is   an  impulsive  class  that 


80  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

will  make  itself  felt,  and  it  will  make  itself 
felt  for  the  kingdom  of  evil  unless  it  is 
baptized  and  captured  for  Christ.  There 
were  some  men  of  impulse  no  doubt  in 
the  throng  that  cried:  "Allelujah!  Ho- 
sanna  to  the  Son  of  David  !  "  and  then, 
"  Crucify  him  !  crucify  him !  "  but  Peter, 
even  if  he  did  deny  his  Lord,  did  not  cry, 
"  Crucify  him  !  "  One  man  of  impulse 
at  least  had  been  captured  for  Christ, 
for  the  future  kingdom,  for  the  glory  of 
the  cross  !  We  need  to  see  to  it  that 
our  Christianity  is  not  purely  reflective, 
is  not  purely  intellectual ;  is  not  pure  cal- 
culation, is  not  pure  thought.  We  need 
impulses  ;  we  need  holy  impulses.  We 
need  to  feel  their  throbs  in  our  life ;  we 
need,  indeed,  sometimes  to  know  the  bene- 
fits of  impulsive  repentance.  It  is  good 
for  us  sometimes  to  go  out  with  Peter  into 
the  lonely  quiet  at  cock-crowing  and  yield 
to  the  impulsive  bitterness  of  our  emo- 
tions, pouring  out  our  soul  in  the  agony 


IMPULSIVE    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.        8 1 

of  repentance  because  our  lives  have  so 
often  been  a  betrayal  of  the  consecrated 
trust  God  has  committed  to  every  one 
of  us  to  keep  against  that  day.  And  I 
should  not  wonder,  if  we  knew  Peter's 
influence  better  we  should  find  out  that 
he  was  a  strength  to  all  the  brethren 
because  of  his  very  sympathy  with  them. 
I  think  that  underlies  Christ's  remarks  to 
Peter.  He  says  :  "  Lovest  thou  me  more 
than  these !  "  He  did  not  simply  rebuke 
him.  Peter  had  been  professing  his  loy- 
alty so  very  pronouncedly,  possibly  those 
who  sometimes  were  his  rivals,  his  former 
partners  in  his  fishing  concerns,  may 
have  felt  he  was  a  little  too  forward. 
"  Now,"  says  Christ,  "  when  thou  art  con- 
verted, strengthen  thy  brethren."  It  is 
for  the  most  part  the  man  of  emotions, 
the  man  whose  heart  is  largest,  that  is 
felt  in  the  time  of  trouble  to  come  closest 
to  us  and  to  strengthen  us  most  in  our 
hour   of    need.     What    warm  sympathy 


82  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

Peter  must  have  had  with  those  who 
touched  him,  who,  like  himself,  were  apt 
to  betray  the  Master  in  the  stress  of 
their  temptation!  Peter,  I  have  no 
doubt,  was  many  a  time  able  to  take 
some  weaker  Christian  than  himself 
and  help  him  up,  saying  to  him,  "  You 
know  very  well  the  story  of  my  betrayal, 
but  Christ  has  not  given  me  up.  No, 
he  said  to  me,  '  Feed  my  lambs ;  feed  my 
little  sheep.'  He  looked  me  straight  in 
the  eye,  he  took  me  by  the  hand,  he 
helped  me  up,  and  he  will  help  you  up." 
Peter,  I  have  no  doubt,  was  able  to 
strengthen  the  brethren  as  some  of  those 
who  had  sinned  less  were  not  able  to 
strengthen  them,  because  of  his  sym- 
pathy, because  he  was  able  to  enter  into 
their  lives  and  weaknesses  and  to  take 
account  of  the  yielding  of  our  whole 
nature  under  the  stress  of  temptation. 
When  so  tempted  we  are  able  almost  to 
cry  out  with  Paul,  "  It  was  not  I  that  did 


IMPULSIVE    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       83 

it,  but  the  flesh  :  therefore,  the  thing  I 
would,  that  I  do  not;  and  the  thing  I 
would  not,  that  I  do." 

We  need  emotional  Christianity,  with 
all  its  errors  of  judgment,  that  we  may 
come  closer  to  one  another  and  feel  with 
one  another.  With  kindled  emotions 
and  kindly  impulses  we  need  to  go  to 
one  another  and  help  one  another  up, 
even  though  the  cooler,  calculating  judg- 
ment will  often  speak  about  the  hopeless- 
ness and  helplessness  of  it. 

Christ  on  his  cross  felt  also  what  it  was 
to  surrender  his  spirit,  and  the  dear  loved 
ones  round  about  him  with  all  their  weak- 
ness, into  the  keeping  of  his  Father. 
God  needs  us,  even  in  our  weakness. 
He  needs  all  that  there  is  of  us.  He 
needs  the  weakness ;  if  it  is  committed  to 
him,  if  it  is  crucified  with  Christ,  if  it  is 
baptized  unto  his  death,  God  can  use  it, 
and  will  use  it  in  or0od  time. 

And   when    we    are   converted,  let  us 


84  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

strengthen  our  brethren.  We  need  that 
sympathetic,  impulsive  Christianity,  be- 
cause it  comes  first,  and  will  often  go  fur- 
ther than  the  more  calculating  kind.  John 
got  first  to  the  sepulchre,  but  it  was  Peter 
that  entered  in.  John  first  recognized 
Christ,  but  it  was  Peter  who  jumped  into 
the  water  to  go  to  him.  Impulsive,  emo- 
tional Christianity  is  needed  because  it 
has  power  to  carry  us  on,  sometimes  even 
to  victory  that  seems  wellnigh  hopeless. 
God  can  cleanse  and  baptize  our  emo- 
tions, and  send  them  further  and  faster 
than  our  poor  weak  judgments  may  deem 
safe  in  the  beginning.  We  need  to  bap- 
tize our  best  and  noblest  impulses ;  we 
need  to  baptize  our  emotions;  we  need  to 
commit  them  to  God,  to  have  them  lifted 
up,  sanctified  and  made  a  burning  fire. 

This  age  prides  itself  upon  being  re- 
flective, analytical,  critical.  So  it  is. 
That  has  all  its  place.  Sometimes  we  are 
a  little  fond  of  staying  back  rather  than 


IMPULSIVE    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       85 

setting  ourselves  against  the  wrong : 
"  Dear  me  !  we  ought  to  do  so  and  so. 
We  ou^ht  to  do  this  and  that.  Some- 
body  ought  to  go  in  and  purify  our  poli- 
tics ! "  A  crying  need  of  the  world  to- 
day is  a  baptized  indignation  at  wrong- 
doing. We  need  to  feel  that  God  can 
use  us  when  we  are  set  on  fire  for  him. 
He  will  take  care  of  the  judgment,  quick- 
ening and  sharpening  it  in  the  fires  of 
enthusiasm,  by  which  we  will  set  fire  to 
the  world.  Our  impulses  for  righteous- 
ness need  obedience. 

We  need  to  have  our  emotions  touched. 
There  is  something  very  wonderful  to  me 
in  the  way  in  which  the  cross  of  Christ 
seems  to  have  affected  the  northern  bar- 
barism. One  might  hardly  think  that 
those  wild,  ferocious,  blood-stained  North- 
men, accustomed  to  every  sort  of  cruelty, 
to  every  sort  of  iniquity,  could  be  reached 
on  the  side  of  their  emotions.  Yet  it 
was    not   those   skilled   in   ecclesiastical 


86  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

orthodoxy  that  reached  the  North.  It 
was  not  an  elaborately  reasoned  system 
that  touched  these  men.  What  really 
touched  the  north  of  Europe  was  a  band 
of  brave  but  ill-trained  monks,  who  went 
holding  up  simply  the  cross  on  which  was 
nailed  the  suffering,  bleeding  body  of 
Christ.  They  were  touched  by  that  story 
of  atoning  love  as  you  would  hardly  have 
thought  these  great  brawny,  blood-stained 
Northmen  could  have  been  touched  ;  and 
once  touched,  they  became  the  ethical 
power  that  broke  the  chains  from  off  the 
Church  and  set  Europe  free.  We  need 
to  have  Christ  lifted  up,  not  only  that  our 
intellects  may  be  true,  but  that  our  hearts 
may  be  touched  with  the  message  of 
God's  everlasting  and  infinite  love,  show- 
ing itself  forth  in  the  suffering  and  pa- 
tience of  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus 
Christ.  We  need  again  and  again  to 
be  converted  by  looking  at  the  cross  and 
seeing  there  all  the  love  of  the  incarnate 


IMPULSIVE    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       8j 

God,  that  we  may  be  ready  to  crucify 
with  him  our  impulses,  our  passions,  our 
affections,  our  lives;  that  we  may  look 
into  his  face  and  be  able  to  answer  truly, 
"  Lord,  thou  knowest  all  things.  I  have 
been  wicked  and  sinful  and  untrue  to 
thee.  My  heart  is  wellnigh  hardened 
with  selfishness  and  self-deceit;  but  I 
would  have  thee  touch  me,  I  would  have 
thee  draw  me  closer  to  thyself.  Thou 
knowest  all  things ;  thou  knowest  that 
I  love  thee."  May  God  help  us  to  con- 
secrate our  emotions  to  the  service  of 
Christ.  May  God  help  us  to  hear  the 
word  that  has  come  to  many  a  weak  and 
wavering  Peter :  "  Simon,  Simon,  Satan 
hath  desired  to  have  thee,  that  he  may 
sift  thee  as  wheat :  but  I  have  prayed  for 
thee,  and  when  thou  art  converted, 
strengthen  thy  brethren." 


V. 

THE   INTELLECTUAL   TYPE   OF   CHRIS- 
TIANITY. 

With  freedom  did  Christ  set  us  free :  stand  fast 
therefore,  and  be  not  entangled  again  in  a  yoke 
of  bondage.  —  Gal.  v.  i. 

TDAUL  swept  into  himself  in  a  very 
remarkable  way  the  three  world 
influences,  —  the  Greek,  the  Roman,  and 
the  Jewish.  One  of  the  great  historians 
of  Germany  has  pointed  out  that  in 
these  three  world  influences  we  have  the 
practical  explanation  of  all  that  we  value 
as  civilization.  He  was  a  Roman  citi- 
zen. There  are,  I  think,  decided  traces 
throughout  both  Romans  and  Galatians 
that  he  was  fairly  well  acquainted  with  at 
least  the  principles  of  Roman  law.  His 
knowledge  of  Greek  poetry  we  are  possi- 
bly inclined  to  exaggerate  because  of  such 


INTELLECTUAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.      89 

chance  quotations  from  it  as  we  find 
in  his  writings ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  it 
is  not  at  all  unlikely  that  he  was  fami- 
liar with  the  literature  of  Greece,  for  in 
his  own  native  city  of  Tarsus  Greek 
influences  were  the  predominant  ones. 
Tarsus  was  a  city  that  had  had  a  great 
deal  of  influence,  and  its  influence  was 
very  largely  intellectual.  It  had  been 
greatly  attracted  by  Greek  thought;  so, 
for  instance,  the  games  of  Tarsus  were 
in  all  likelihood  prevalently  Greek  rather 
than  Roman,  which  would  indicate  a 
predominance  of  Greek  rather  than 
Roman  thought. 

Of  course,  Paul  was  Jewish,  and  thor- 
oughly Jewish;  a  Pharisee  brought  up 
in  the  Pharisaic  schools,  thoroughly  ac- 
quainted with  the  history  of  his  people, 
thoroughly  imbued  with  the  best  spirit 
of  his  own  time.  Thus  we  have  a  very 
remarkable  figure,  combining  in  one  cen- 
tre the  synthesis  of  the  great  influences 


90  TOWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

that  were  to  mould  the  destiny  of  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth.  It  was  natural,  there- 
fore, that  Paul  should  make  for  himself 
an  intellectual  atmosphere  in  which  the 
Church's  thinking  was  to  develop.  He 
did  for  the  Church  what  neither  James, 
nor  John,  nor  Peter  could  have  done  so 
far  as  we  know  them.  It  was  quite  im- 
possible for  even  the  wonderful  Fourth 
Gospel  and  the  writings  of  John  to 
have  quite  the  effect  upon  the  Roman 
mind  that  Paul's  writings  were  able  to 
exercise,  in  part  through  the  limitations 
of  the  Roman  mind,  and  also,  indeed, 
owing  to  the  limitations  of  the  intuitive 
and  perceptive  character  of  John's  mind. 
We  take  Paul,  therefore,  very  natur- 
ally as  the  type  of  what  we  may  call  in- 
tellectual Christianity.  Christianity  must 
be  intellectual  if  it  is  to  command  the 
respect  of  men  whom  God  would  save. 
Christ  will  have  the  whole  of  man ;  he 
will   have   his   mind,   and  his  heart,  and 


INTELLECTUAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.     9 1 

his  life.  Christ's  kingdom  is  not  a  one- 
sided kingdom.  It  is  to  be  social,  it  is  to 
be  intellectual,  it  is  to  be  moral,  it  is  to 
be  spiritual,  it  is  to  be  rounded  out.  The 
intellect  must  be  fired  from  above ;  and 
once  fired  from  above,  it  enters  forthwith 
into  the  Christian  life  as  a  very  large  and 
very  important  factor. 

But  the  intellectual  type  of  Christi- 
anity has  of  course  its  dangers.  The  in- 
tellectual life  has  a  certain  tendency  to 
arrogance  that  is  born  and  bred  of  the 
constant  comparison  of  its  own  self  with 
the  grosser  stupidity  which  it  finds  round 
about  it.  A  man  does  not  need  to  be 
very  far  on  in  the  intellectual  life  before 
he  begins  to  compare  himself  with  others, 
greatly  to  his  own  advantage,  however, 
and  to  the  disadvantage  of  those  whom 
he  has  left  behind.  The  danger  of 
intellectual  arrogance  is  especially  per- 
ceptible in  the  mind  that  is  clear  and 
logical.     The  mind  that    having  started 


92  POWER    OF   AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

with  certain  terms  must  carry  its  reason- 
ing on  to  the  end  has  no  patience  with 
the  mind  that  insists  on  breaking  in  with 
other  lines  of  thought  before  the  solution 
is  given. 

Intellectual  Christianity  has  also  its 
dangers  in  the  fact  that  the  intellectual 
life  is  very  apt  to  exclude  us  from  some 
other  phases  of  life.  The  man  who  is  a 
mere  intellectual  machine  cannot  enter 
into  many  of  the  hopes  and  fears  and 
wishes  of  the  multitude  about  him,  for  the 
multitude  is  not  governed  in  the  first 
instance  by  the  intellect.  If  we  were 
quite  shrewd  enough  we  should  realize 
that  the  intellect  must  come  after  a  great 
deal  else,  for  the  intellect  is  analytical,  and 
if  there  is  not  something  to  analyze  it  has 
no  place  at  all.  But  this  is  too  often  for- 
gotten, and  the  danger  to  thinking  men  is 
a  certain  dogmatic  narrowness,  a  certain 
hardness,  and  conventional  type  even,  so 
that  we  find  that  intellectual  Christianity 


INTELLECTUAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.     93 

as  it  has  come  down  the  ages  has  often 
repelled  instead  of  attracting  even  those 
to  whom  intellectual  Christianity  ought  to 
have  had  power  and  value. 

I  think  you  will  notice  in  Romans  and 
Galatians  a  tone  somewhat  different  from 
that  which  you  will  find  in  Philippians 
and  Ephesians,  and  different  also  from  the 
personal  tone  of  the  pastoral  letters.  No 
thoughtful  mind  can  fail  to  see  that  there 
was  progress,  decided  progress,  in  the 
spiritual  life  of  Paul.  When  we  leave 
the  first  and  second  centuries  and  turn 
to  such  men  as  Tertullian  and  Augus- 
tine, and  in  the  seventeenth  century  to 
such  men  as  the  scholastics  and  the  in- 
tellectual leaders  of  the  Reformation,  we 
are  thoroughly  and  powerfully  impressed 
with  a  certain  intellectual  narrowness  of 
dogmatism,  and  a  harsh  and  arrogant 
tone,  which  shows  us  that  on  the  intellec- 
tual side  of  Christianity  there  are  dangers 
which  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  avoid,  no 


94  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

matter  on  which  side  of  the  controversy 
we  stand,  unless  we  are  fully  baptized 
with  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
and  have  made  intellectual  surrender  to 
him  as  well  as  surrender  of  the  heart. 

Intellectual  Christianity  from  the  very 
nature  of  the  thing  is  analytical,  and  ana- 
lysis is  the  pulling  apart.  From  the  very 
nature  of  it  intellectual  Christianity  has 
in  it  a  certain  destructive  element.  It 
must  criticise,  it  must  look  behind,  it  is 
never  satisfied  with  the  forms  as  they  are 
round  about.  It  could  not  be,  it  would 
cease  to  be,  intellectual  Christianity  if  it 
did  not  thus  insist,  and  sternly  insist, 
upon  satisfying  the  conditions  of  God- 
given  reason.  But  there  is  the  danger 
that  it  may  confine  itself  to  the  destruc- 
tive, and  that  the  constructive  work  be 
left  out  of  account,  —  to  the  pulling  to 
pieces  of  Sadduceeism  with  nothing  as 
yet  to  put  in  its  place.  But  for  all  that, 
we  must  take  it  as  it  is.     We  enter  the 


INTELLECTUAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.     95 

Christian  life  with  our  reason,  and  we 
must  take  our  reason  along  with  us. 
The  forms  of  reason  we  cannot  leave  be- 
hind any  more  than  we  can  leave  other 
forms  behind.  When  you  first  took 
Christ  into  your  life,  you  took  him  with 
your  many  defects,  which  Christ  in  your 
heart  is  going  to  cure  daily  if  you  will 
surrender  yourself  daily  unto  him.  There 
are  faces  about  us  that  you  have  perhaps 
seen  grow  beautiful  because  of  the  life  of 
suffering  and  sacrifice  that  has  changed 
the  plain  features  into  a  heavenly  beauty. 
But  we  cannot  start  with  our  faces  shin- 
ing. We  cannot  start  with  anything  but 
reason  as  God  has  given  it  to  us.  Paul 
had  to  start  in  his  Christian  course  as  a 
Pharisee.  He  had  to  leave  much  behind  ; 
but  it  was  because  he  surrendered  his 
reason,  surrendered  it  wholly  to  Christ, 
that  it  was  changed  and  transformed  into 
one  of  the  mightiest  and  most  potent 
weapons  for  the  winning  of  the  victory 


96  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

of  the  Church  and  for  the  building  up  of 
the  temple  whose  strengthening  God  had 
entrusted  to  his  servant. 

And  so  I  think  we  can  not  go  far 
astray  in  taking  Paul  as  a  splendid  type 
of  the  proper  use  of  the  intellect,  and  as 
the  proper  intellectual  type  of  Christi- 
anity. This  is  evident,  because  Paul 
brought  to  the  service  of  Christ  every- 
thing he  had,  —  his  learning,  his  Phari- 
saic training,  his  knowledge  of  Greek 
thought,  his  knowledge  of  the  Hebrew 
language ;  and  he  laid  it  all  as  a  sacri- 
fice on  the  altar  to  his  Master.  His 
intellect,  his  intellectual  powers,  these 
were  his  Master's,  because  everything 
he  had  was  his;  and  what  splendid 
use  he  made  of  them !  Take,  for  in- 
stance, that  scene  upon  Mars  Hill. 
This  little  Jewish  man,  probably  rather 
unsightly,  if  tradition  is  correct,  who 
comes  to  Athens,  where  every  one  is 
so  graphically  described  as  seeking  only 


INTELLECTUAL   TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.     97 

to  hear  some  new  thing.  He  met  these 
Athenians  with  their  scientific  dogma- 
tism, with  their  philosophical  problems ; 
they  amused  themselves  with  these  things 
and  believed  that  they  were  living,  pre- 
cisely as  a  great  many  of  us  to-day  amuse 
ourselves  by  haunting  the  lecture-rooms 
and  discussing  questions,  without  any 
real  intention  of  making  them  bear  upon 
our  lives  or,  through  us,  upon  other 
people's  lives.  They  were  at  Athens, 
as  we  should  find  them  in  New  York 
and  Boston  and  Chicago  to-day,  and  to 
this  intellectual  centre  the  despised  Jew 
comes.  They  will  hear  what  this  bab- 
bler says.  And  could  anything  have 
been  more  calculated  to  win  their  atten- 
tion than  the  tact  with  which  he  com- 
mences to  speak  of  the  things  they  believe 
in  common,  leading  them  up  to  the  things 
he  had  come  to  proclaim  as  the  one  mes- 
sage worth  telling  ?  It  is  a  study  for 
every  Christian  apologist,  for  every  Chris- 


98  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

tian  missionary,  for  every  Christian  min- 
ister. I  suppose  that  some  of  those  who 
have  objected  to  the  Parliament  of  Re- 
ligions would  have  found  great  fault  with 
Paul  for  quoting  heathen  philosophers, 
and  setting  the  seal  of  his  approval  to 
what  they  said.  How  could  any  one  ever 
have  complimented  these  empty-hearted, 
though  overburdened  Athenians  upon 
their  being  too  religious  !  But  Paul  is 
all  things  to  all  men,  and  he  catches 
them  ;  he  gets  their  attention  at  least  long 
enough  to  tell  them  that  the  things  he 
had  come  to  proclaim  were  what  they 
were  hungering  for,  the  things  of  the 
risen  life,  and  he  tells  them  of  the  resur- 
rection from  the  dead.  He  is  a  splendid 
type  of  what  intellectual  Christianity 
ought  to  be,  because,  bringing  as  he  did 
all  things  to  Christ,  and  laying  all  things 
upon  that  altar,  his  intellectual  life  is  a 
means  to  an  end,  and  that  only.  There 
is  a  tendency  in  us  to  grade  all  things. 


INTELLECTUAL   TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.     99 

We  say,  "  How  much  higher  is  the  ar- 
tistic than  the  purely  intellectual ;  how 
much  higher  the  intellectual  than  the 
practical !  How  nice  it  is  to  see  men 
who  have  been  absorbed  in  business  give 
now  their  time  to  intellectual  work ! " 
As  though  intellectual  work  were  any 
better  than  business  !  There  would  be 
no  intellectual  work  if  there  were  no 
business.  And  so  we  set  ourselves  up  in 
little  exclusive  ranks,  —  the  agricultural, 
the  poor  farmer,  he  is  one  class  by  himself, 
—  and  lose  sympathy  entirely  in  our  arbi- 
trary, exclusive  distinctions,  which  ought 
to  be  lost  in  the  feeling  that  humanity 
is  one,  that  there  is  no  man  mean  in 
the  sight  of  God.  Intellectual  work  may 
be  as  exclusive,  as  selfish,  as  ignoble,  as 
material,  as  debased,  as  any  other  work 
in  the  world  if  it  is  not  brought  to  the 
altar  of  Christ ;  if  it  is  not  sanctified  by 
the  presence  of  God's  Holy  Spirit;  if  it  is 
not  unselfish,  and  wholly  unselfish,  as  a 


IOO        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

means  to  some  greater  end  for  the  great 
throbbing  life  of  which  we  are  a  part, 
and  from  which  to  cut  ourselves  off  is 
spiritual  suicide.  God  is  in  life,  and  if 
we  would  come  in  contact  with  God  we 
must  be  in  contact  with  that  life  which 
is  his,  and  is  all  around  us. 

So  then,  whatever  may  be  our  intel- 
lectual attainments,  we  have  only  to 
compare  ourselves  with  Omnipotence 
to  realize  how  pitiable  and  painfully 
stupid  the  wisest  among  men  have  been 
in  all  the  ages.  How  puerile  seems  the 
reason  we  have  counted  fine!  how  mis- 
taken the  dogmas  men  have  said  would 
last  forever!  how  utterly  wrong  the  gen- 
eralizations men  have  thought  they  had 
established  !  Let  us  prostrate  ourselves 
before  God,  and  find  that  the  intellect  is 
of  use  only  as  God  takes  it  and  enlight- 
ens it  and  makes  it  the  means,  as  he 
made  Paul's  splendid  intellect  the  means, 
for  making  known  the  message  of  salva- 


INTELLECTUAL  TYPE  OF  CHRISTIANITY.      IOI 

tion  through  a  risen  Lord  to  a  world 
lying    in  wickedness. 

And  this  also  is  to  be  learned  from 
Paul,  that  throughout  his  life  he  not  only 
seemed  to  use  his  intellectual  life  as  a 
means  to  an  end,  but  he  never  misused 
it.  It  is  never  thrust  upon  us,  it  is  kept 
ever  as  a  means  to  an  end,  and  he  is  con- 
stantly and  forever  surrendering  it  to 
the  one  thing,  —  to  the  voice  within  him 
that  speaks  to  men,  and  tells  them  that 
right  is  right  and  wrong  is  wrong  to 
all  eternity. 

So  Paul  used  his  intellect,  and  I  be- 
lieve that  in  the  using  of  it  for  the 
purposes  of  Christ  it  received  not  only 
baptism  but  training;  that  even  for  the 
purposes  of  the  intellect,  to  surrender 
it  to  God  is  the  best  thing  we  can  do. 
I  believe  this  is  true  along  the  whole 
range  of  life.  It  was  when  art  began  to 
be  practised  merely  for  art's  sake  that  it 
not  only  became  decadent,  but  the    na- 


102         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

tional  life  became  decadent.  Mr.  Ruskin 
points  out,  but  to  me  seems  to  offer  no 
adequate  explanation  of  the  fact,  that  at 
the  time  art  has  reached  its  highest  ex- 
pression, the  national  life  has  seemed 
generally  to  be  most  decadent,  as  in  the 
Augustan  era,  the  Renaissance  in  Italy, 
the  period  of  Queen  Anne  in  England. 
This,  however,  seems  to  me  to  be  one  of 
the  solutions  of  it,  that  the  age  was  deca- 
dent because  art  was  practised  simply  for 
art's  sake,  and  intellectualism  was  prac- 
tised merely  for  the  intellect's  sake.  As 
soon  as  a  man  attends  to  his  body  merely 
for  his  own  sensuous  bodily  purposes, 
just  so  soon  not  only  is  there  decadence 
of  the  best  that  is  in  him,  but  there  will 
be  decadence  of  the  body,  decadence  of 
the  mind,  decadence  of  all  that  is  essen- 
tial to  real  life ;  and  if  art  must  express 
life,  that  life  must  be  divine  to  be  worth 
expressing,  and  until  we  learn  to  trea- 
sure what  is  divine,  we  shall  find  our- 


INTELLECTUAL  TYPE  OF  CHRISTIANITY.      IO3 

selves  again  and  again  upon  the  weary- 
slope  up  which  men  have  crawled  with  so 
much  difficulty  only  to  find  the  burden 
dragging  them  down  when  they  believed 
they  saw  eternity  from  the  top. 

God  needs  our  intellects,  and  never 
more  so  than  to-day.  We  need  to  sur- 
render our  intellects  to  God  that  the 
pressing  problems  of  the  Church  may  be 
solved.  We  stand  divided.  We  have 
been  hair-splitting  and  fighting  among 
ourselves,  and  the  great  world  outside 
neither  fears  nor  hates  us.  There  is  no 
task  more  precious  in  the  sight  of  God 
to-day  than  the  task  the  men  of  intellect 
have  before  them  in  the  solving  of  prob- 
lems whose  solution  will  unite  us  once 
more  in  the  face  of  the  enemy,  and  thrust 
us,  even  if  we  be  cut  in  pieces,  in  the 
face  of  the  foe  with  the  banner  of  Christ 
and  his  Cross  over  us.  Young  men,  some 
of  you  with  educational  advantages  of 
which  to  your  dying  day  you  will  have 


104        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

to  render  an  account  unto  the  Father, 
take  these  advantages,  take  your  minds, 
and  make  them  a  sacrifice  upon  the  altar 
of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  There  is  no 
more  splendid  use  of  the  consecrated, 
surrendered  intellect  than  the  solving 
of  the  weary  social  problems  that  lie 
before  us.  Christ  saw  how  it  would  be 
with  us.  He  said,  "  The  poor  ye  have 
always  with  you,  but  me  ye  have  not 
always."  It  is  just  because  Christ  is 
not  always  with  us  that  the  poor  are 
always  with  us.  We  have  problems 
that  need  more  than  mere  goodness, 
that  need  more  than  impulsive  Christi- 
anity, that  need  more  than  simply  the 
heart  that  goes  out  in  pity  and  sym- 
pathy; we  need  surrendered  intellects; 
we  need  consecrated  brains ;  we  need 
directing  minds  baptized  from  on  high ; 
we  need  you  business  men  to  take  and 
reform  our  accursed  social  and  industrial 
conditions.     Must  man  be  ever  groaning 


INTELLECTUAL  TYPE  OF  CHRISTIANITY.      IO5 

in  the  weary  tread-mill  of  life,  finding 
those  who  are  on  the  top  corrupted  by 
the  eminence,  and  those  below  ground 
to  death  by  the  weight?  The  world 
needs  your  intellects  set  on  fire  from  on 
high,  and  never  more  than  to-day.  We 
need  to  surrender  them  to  God.  What 
the  world  needs  is  not  surrender  to  a 
church,  nor  to  a  priest,  nor  to  a  theologi- 
cal school,  nor  to  a  general  assembly,  but 
to  God  only.  "  Stand  fast  in  the  liberty 
wherewith  Christ  hath  made  us  free,  and 
be  not  entangled  again  in  the  yoke  of 
bondage."  That  surrender  must  be  ab- 
solute. Who  are  we  that  we  should 
strive  with  the  Almighty  ?  Who  are  we 
to  think  that  we  are  sufficient  in  our- 
selves? Our  only  use,  our  only  dignity, 
our  only  worth,  will  come  from  our  lives 
being  the  expression  of  the  divine  life 
which  breathes  into  our  human  minds  the 
message  of  God's  love  for  his  fallen  crea- 
tion.    For  God  can  redeem  it,  if  it  will 


106         POWER    OF   AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

only  suffer  itself  to  be  redeemed.  God 
over  all  —  even  though  he  is  crucified 
—  preached  to  all  nations.  God  over  all, 
and  Christ  at  the  right  hand  of  the 
Father,  who  will  come  again  to  receive 
a  redeemed  universe  gathered  into  his 
Church  that  we  may  be  his  sons  and 
daughters. 

Dear  friends !  Young  men !  Young 
women  !  what  are  you  doing  with  your 
minds?  What  are  you  doing  with  your 
culture  ?  What  are  you  doing  with  the 
life  God  has  given  you?  What  are  you 
doing  with  your  advantages?  These 
things  are  responsibilities  which  will 
weigh  you  down  before  the  judgment- 
seat  unless  you  share  them  with  Christ, 
unless  you  are  working  his  law  in  the 
world.     May  God  help  you  to  do  it ! 


VI. 

THE   ETHICAL  TYPE   OF   CHRISTIANITY. 

Take,  brethren,  for  an  example  of  suffering  and  of 
patience,  the  prophets  who  spake  in  the  name  of 
the  Lord. —  Jas.  v.  io. 

I  have  taken  this  text  because  the  type 
of  Christian  life  represented  by  James  is 
as  it  were,  the  connecting  link  between 
the  Old  Testament  and  the  New.  The 
logic  of  the  life  of  Christ,  of  his  teachings 
and  sufferings,  was  a  glorious  manifes- 
tation of  that  liberty  which  is  in  Christ 
Jesus,  and  of  which  we  see  Paul  to  be  so 
splendid  a  type.  But  Christ  himself  left 
those  who  were  to  come  after  him,  under 
the  guidance  of  the  Spirit  promised,  to 
find  their  way  to  the  logic  of  that  posi- 
tion. He  himself  attended  the  syna- 
gogue ;    he   proclaimed    himself    as   the 


IOS         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

fulfilment  and  not  the  destruction  of 
the  Old  Testament;  and  it  is  very  easy 
for  us  to  leave  the  light  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament and  greatly  exaggerate  the  gap 
that  separates  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments from  each  other.  We  might  very 
easily  altogether  misunderstand  the  New 
Testament  or  misinterpret  the  Old  by 
taking  either  of  them  separately,  not  re- 
membering that  in  the  revelation  of 
himself  God  has  used  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  a  preparation,  and  that  the  full 
importance  of  this  revelation  is  only 
to  be  realized  when  we  view  it  as  de- 
veloped in  Jesus  Christ  in  the  New 
Testament. 

There  was  a  section  of  the  Christian 
Church  that  was  not  in  accord  with  the 
complete  logic  of  the  Christian  position 
as  set  forth  by  Paul.  It  was  very  nat- 
ural that  the  Jewish  Christian  church 
should  resent  many  things,  find  fault 
with  many  things,  and  fail  to  understand 


ETHICAL    TYPE    OF   CHRISTIANITY.       IO9 

many  things  that  came  quite  naturally  to 
the  Christian  Church  that  had  broken 
loose  more  completely  from  the  old  life 
that  still  centred  in  Jerusalem.  There 
was  antagonism;  which  antagonism  was 
bridged  over  by  the  wisdom  and  patience 
of  the  principal  apostles ;  but  the  antag- 
onism made  itself  felt,  of  which  we  have 
evident  sioms  in  the  New  Testament 
history  itself. 

It  is  James  that  represents  a  type  of 
thought  that  is  the  intermediate  link  be- 
tween the  old  dispensation  and  the  new, 
as  represented  by  the  Jewish  Christian 
wing  of  the  Church.  It  was  only  after 
the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  that  the 
Church,  as  it  were,  broke  into  the  ful- 
ness of  the  life,  the  fulness  of  the  lib- 
erty, the  glory  of  the  revealed  form  of 
Christ's  gospel.  James,  however,  repre- 
sents a  type  of  Christian  life  that,  with 
all  its  limitations,  with  all  its  necessary 
defects,  has  had  a  very  glorious  history 


IIO         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

in  God's  Church,  a  history  that  is  not 
yet  completed.  The  type  represented  by 
James  will,  I  believe,  always  have  its 
message  and  its  mission  to  the  Christian 
world.  James  represents  what  we  might 
know  as  the  Puritan  type  of  the  Christian 
life,  —  a  type  of  Christian  character  whose 
praises  have  been  sung  and  whose  limita- 
tions have  been  pointed  out  so  frequently, 
that  it  has  become  to  us  usually  either 
a  bugbear  on  the  one  hand,  or  an  idol 
on  the  other.  The  truth  is  between  the 
two.  The  Puritan  type  of  Christian  char- 
acter had  its  invaluable  message  to  the 
Christian  world ;  it  had  a  heroic  work ; 
and  with  all  its  limitations,  its  work  may 
have  to  be  done  over  and  over  again  by  its 
resurrection  in  the  Church  of  God,  speak- 
ing, warning,  and  living  the  life  which 
has  proved  in  the  crises  of  the  Church's 
history  of  such  momentous  importance. 

The  limitations  of  the  Puritan  type  of 
Christian  life  lie  somewhat  on  the  sur- 


ETHICAL   TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       I  I  I 

face.  There  is  an  attachment  to  the  for- 
mal elements  that  has  its  cause  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  rise  of  the  Puritan  type.  It 
rose  as  a  protest.  The  Jewish  Christian 
church  was  also  a  protest.  This  church 
did  not  seek  to  separate  itself  from  the 
synagogue,  nor  from  the  sacrifices  and 
the  temple.  To  the  very  end  it  wor- 
shipped at  the  temple.  Paul  goes  up  at 
the  demand  of  the  Jewish  Christian 
church  to  fulfil  his  vows,  taking  part  in 
the  temple  services.  They  were  the  re- 
form party  in  the  Jewish  church, — a  party 
that  did  not  care  to  break  loose  from  the 
old,  but  sought  to  rehabilitate  it,  sought 
to  breathe  into  it  a  newer  spirit,  protest- 
ing against  its  weakness  and  rottenness ; 
and  in  that  protest  there  are  the  ele- 
ments of  some  of  the  limitations  which 
have  marked  them.  They  became  the 
protesting  or  Protestant  church,  missing 
some  of  the  tenderness,  and  much  of  the 
formative  spirit,  and  in  the  very  vigor  of 


112        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

their  assaults  becoming  critical  and  de- 
structive, rather  than  formative,  in  their 
character. 

This  weakness  may  be  seen,  I  think, 
in  what  the  Puritan  type  has  done  for 
England,  where  it  has  appeared  more  fre- 
quently and  in  greater  purity  than  in  any 
other  Christian  civilization.  The  Puritan 
type  there  has  attached  itself  to  certain 
individual  and  distinct  reforms.  It  has 
begun  in  protesting  against  particular 
lines  of  thought ;  it  has  had  its  force  and 
strength  from  its  pointed,  direct,  and  un- 
compromising attack  upon  particular  and 
visible  evils.  In  doing  this,  whether  it 
gained  its  point  or  lost  it,  it  has  been  in 
danger  from  this  undue  emphasis  upon 
its  purely  protesting  character,  and  in  the 
second  and  third  and  fourth  generations 
of  Puritanism  the  danger  has  been  that 
each  generation  lived  more  and  more 
upon  the  protest  and  the  traditions  of 
the  past,  and  so  failed  to  comprehend  the 


ETHICAL   TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       113 

new  duty  which  was  to  take  the  place  of 
the  things  which  had  been  destroyed. 
Hence  it  has  been  that  Puritanism  too 
often  in  the  life  of  the  second  or  third 
generation  has  been  marked  by  a  vacuum 
which  has  not  always  been  filled  with 
those  things  which  were  most  useful  to 
the  Christian  Church  as  a  whole. 

Then,  also,  this  ever  protesting  charac- 
acter  of  the  Puritan  type  has  always 
brought  with  it  the  danger  of  a  certain 
sternness  in  its  righteousness,  that  some- 
times has  produced  a  sense  of  self-right- 
eousness and  censoriousness  extremely 
detrimental  to  the  entirety  of  character. 
In  the  protesting,  there  has  been  a  con- 
stant tendency  to  self-assertion,  first,  in- 
deed as  against  the  world  and  evil,  a 
self-assertion  that  is  justified  by  facts ; 
but  then,  as  a  consequence  of  that,  a  self- 
assertion  as  against  any  one  that  differs 
with  it, —  a  self-assertion  too  apt  to  regard 

anything   that  opposes  it  as  necessarily 

8 


114        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

an  evil.  Hence,  there  has  always  been 
in  the  literature  of  Puritanism  in  its  later 
manifestations  a  certain  narrowness  that 
has  been  one  of  the  marked  weaknesses 
often  pointed  out.  There  has  also  been 
a  certain  lack  of  tenderness,  a  certain 
lack  of  the  fine  flavor  that  characterizes 
Paul,  for  instance,  and  still  more  John  in 
his  writings ;  a  tenderness  one  feels  to 
be  indeed  out  of  place  upon  some  battle- 
fields; a  tenderness  that  it  is  only  natural 
that  men  should  lay  aside  when  they  enter 
into  the  sterner  contests  that  Puritanism 
has  so  often  waged.  At  the  same  time  a 
lack  of  this  tenderness  has  left  Puritan- 
ism often  out  of  touch  with  the  newer 
life,  has  isolated  it,  has  made  it  often  the 
embodiment  of  a  religious  type  that  with- 
draws itself  from  the  world  in  a  way  in 
which  Christ  did  not  withdraw  himself 
from  the  world.  This  has  exposed  it  to 
the  charges  of  bigotry  and  straight-laced- 
ness,  and  even  of  hypocrisy,  because  in 


ETHICAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       I  I  5 

its  isolation  being  out  of  touch  with  the 
world,  not  in  sympathy  with  the  move- 
ments round  about  it,  it  has  often  yielded 
unconsciously  to  other  evils  than  those 
against  which  it  was  called  into  being  to 
protest  against.  And  so  it  has  exposed 
itself  to  the  ready  charge  of  deep  incon- 
sistency ;  and,  as  we  see  in  the  repre- 
sentative Puritanism  of  England,  two  or 
three  times  these  charges  have  been  so 
successfully  emphasized  that  Puritanism 
seemed  for  the  time  to  have  lost  all  its 
moral  and  religious  value. 

After  we  have  pointed  out  these  limi- 
tations, it  will  be  proper  also  to  remind 
you  that  the  type  of  Christianity  which 
we  have  called  Puritanism,  and  which  I 
think  is  here  represented  in  James,  has 
its  mission  and  its  message.  This  very 
righteousness  is  the  glory  of  such  a  letter 
as  this,  and  the  Puritan  theocracy  at  the 
time  of  Cromwell  has  as  its  glory  and  its 
strength,  that  it  emphasized  certain  ele- 


Il6         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

ments  in  our  Christian  life  that  have  too 
often  failed  of  emphasis  when  the  Church 
has  been  either  prosperous,  or  swinging 
along  in  an  easy  rut.  Often  have  men 
failed  to  see,  what  the  Puritan  type 
sees  clearly,  the  danger  and  the  ruts 
that  lie  so  much  in  front  of  us  all  along 
the  way.  James  has  a  message,  first,  to 
those  who  are  tempted  and  tried ;  and 
there  is  in  his  message  a  little  of  that 
stern  impatience  with  the  weakness  of 
the  unstable  man.  There  is  something 
of  the  rigor  and  vigor  of  the  Puritan 
spirit  which  feels  that  manhood  means 
courage  and  strength,  and  that  Christian 
manhood  is  to  be  undaunted  courage  and 
undaunted  strength.  What  do  you  lack  ? 
Why  do  you  whine?  Why  do  you  com- 
plain ?  Let  a  man  rather  count  himself 
as  in  the  way  of  grace  when  he  is  in  the 
way  of  trials  and  temptations.  If  he  lack 
wisdom,  let  him  ask  of  God,  who  giveth 
freely  to  every  man  ;  but  be  brave,  cour- 


ETHICAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       I  I  J 

ageous  and  undaunted ;  know  this,  that 
our  God  is  a  consuming  fire,  and  in  his 
strength  we  may  have  hope  and  grace  for 
ever  and  for  evermore.  There  is  some 
fibre,  there  is  some  muscle,  there  is  some 
strength,  there  is  some  vigor,  in  the  very 
type  of  doctrine  that  is  represented  by 
James,  and  which  has  been  emphasized 
with  such  care  by  the  Puritan  type 
throughout  Christian  history.  There  is 
need  of  that  message.  Constantly  ought 
we  to  emphasize  this  need  for  vigor;  for 
an  undaunted  and  unflinching  courage 
of  our  convictions,  a  courage  to  do  right, 
a  righteousness  that  trusts  forever,  that 
does  not  waver,  a  conception  of  Jehovah 
as  King  of  kings  and  Lord  of  lords, 
with  whom  to  fight,  for  whom  to  struggle 
is  blessedness  and  courage  itself.  Let 
not  that  man  who  doubteth  think  he 
shall  receive  anything :  he  is  like  the 
surge  of  the  sea,  driven  by  the  wind  and 
tossed.     It  was  not  characteristic  of  the 


Il8         POWER    OF   AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

Puritan  to  be  tossed  around  like  the 
wave  of  the  sea.  Over  and  over  again 
he  has  unsheathed  his  sword  and  stood 
for  that  which  he  considered  right  and 
against  wrong  and  iniquity  even  in  high 
places.  There  is  a  message  of  Puritan- 
ism that  rings  down  English  history 
which  has  given  strength  to  the  demo- 
cracy, which  has  not  feared  king  or 
priest,  which  has  not  feared  traditions, 
which  has  feared  nothing  but  Jehovah  ;  a 
note  that  we  need  here  from  time  to  time 
amidst  our  notes  of  triumphs  and  rejoi- 
cings. Our  victory  over  sin  is  not  com- 
pleted;  we  have  still  to  see  struggles; 
righteousness  is  not  yet  crowned;  the 
cross  is  yet  to  be  borne.  Protestantism 
has  its  struggles  yet  before  it.  I  verily 
believe  that  in  this  country  the  time  will 
come  when  there  will  be  need  again  for 
the  Puritan  spirit.  It  will  be  a  blessing 
to  this  country  when  men  stand  up  for 
righteousness,  seeking  one  another,  and 


ETHICAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.        I  19 

standing  united  for  the  justice  of  God, 
and  when  they  feel  that  this  letter  of 
James  is  an  epistle  of  inspiration  upon 
which  they  can  base  their  claims  for  a 
higher  life,  a  higher  purity,  a  higher  free- 
dom from  the  subtle  corruptions  and 
temptations  which  so  often  sap  the  Chris- 
tian manhood,  which  so  often  weaken  the 
Christian  character. 

And  again,  Puritanism  has  some  special 
messages.  I  think  it  is  rather  character- 
istic  of  the  Puritan  spirit  that  it  does  pick 
out  and  specially  emphasize  special  evils. 
James  has  a  message  to  the  different 
classes,  —  to  the  wealthy  in  danger  of 
abusing  their  wealth,  to  the  intelligent 
in  danger  of  relying  upon  their  intellects, 
to  those  in  high  places  in  danger  of 
counting  these  things  more  than  the 
honor  of  Christ,  —  a  message  to  the  mere 
will  worker,  to  the  mere  talker,  a  message 
to  the  man  whose  tongue  is  unbridled, 
whose  character  is  loose.     These  things 


120        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

need  emphasis.  These  things  need  some- 
times the  scourge  of  just  such  a  holy 
indignation  as  we  see  in  the  message  of 
James.  There  is  a  time  in  our  own  indi- 
vidual life  when  it  would  be  well  for  us 
to  take  this  message  of  the  old  Puritan 
spirit  as  interpreted  to  us  by  James,  and 
read  it  page  by  page,  line  by  line,  and  say 
to  ourselves,  "  Does  that  cut  me  ?  Does 
that  touch  my  life  ?  Is  that  a  message  to 
my  spirit  which  I  need  to  give  heed  to, 
that  the  man  of  God  may  be  approved, 
1  thoroughly  furnished  unto  all  good 
works  '  ?  "  James  has  a  message,  as  the 
Puritan  party  has  always  had  a  message, 
to  the  Church.  The  Puritan  party  has 
risen  in  all  the  various  denominations  of 
Christendom.  There  is  a  Puritan  party 
that  rose  in  the  Lutheran  church,  a 
Puritan  party  that  rose  in  the  church 
of  England,  and  a  Puritan  party  in  the 
Presbyterian  church.  In  England,  the 
Independents   and    the     Brownists   have 


ETHICAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       12  1 

been  the  evangelical  life  which  has 
moulded  the  Church  that  largely  repre- 
sents the  Puritan  spirit.  It  is  in  the 
English  democracy  to-day  you  see  it ; 
you  read  it  in  its  literature,  you  feel  it  in 
the  democracy  of  England,  which  has  as 
its  best  foundation  stone  the  old  Puritan 
spirit.  This  type,  broadened,  I  hope 
softened,  more  purely  sanctified,  more 
rounded  by  contact  with  other  types  of 
Christian  life,  but  preserving  throughout 
something  of  the  manhood  and  vigor  that 
marks  the  type,  has  yet  a  great  message 
to  the  world.  The  message  to  the  Church 
is  very  distinct,  very  pointed.  Sometimes 
there  is  criticism.  The  Church  is  subject 
often  to  criticism  that  is  captious,  that  is 
a  mere  excuse  for  not  taking  up  the 
duties  of  the  Church.  The  Church  is 
criticised  by  many  who  have  no  inten- 
tion whatsoever  of  making  any  sacrifices 
to  bring  her  back  to  that  perfection  and 
idealism  whose  lack  they  complain  about. 


122        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

Such  criticism  is  unreal,  unnecessary,  and 
imperfect.  But  there  is  also  a  criticism 
of  ourselves  and  of  the  Church  which  has 
in  it  healing,  if  it  comes  in  the  same  way 
as  the  criticism  of  James  ;  in  other  words, 
if  it  comes  from  a  heart  that  represents 
the  hope  of  the  Church,  from  a  love 
that  is  intertwined  with  the  life  of  the 
Church,  and  if  it  comes  out  of  the  very 
yearning  for  that  which  is  living,  and 
pure,  and  better  than  the  past.  Such 
criticism  is  a  saving  element  in  the  life 
of  the  Church ;  and  such  critics,  far 
from  being  cast  out  of  the  synagogue, 
far  from  having  their  message  or  them- 
selves despised,  should  be  hailed  as  an 
evidence  of  the  real  vitality  of  the  Church, 
—  evidence  that  God's  spirit  is  still  speak- 
ing in  the  conscience  of  the  Church,  re- 
calling it  to  lost  duty,  pleading  with  it  to 
take  up  more  fully  the  duties  God  would 
have  us  do.  Such,  then,  are  the  criti- 
cisms of  James.     It  would  be  well  for  us 


ETHICAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       1 23 

to  weigh  at  our  leisure  in  detail  such 
criticisms  as  we  find  in  the  very  bold, 
very  pointed,  very  startling  language  of 
Puritanism,  reproduced  all  through  his- 
tory, and  finding  its  warrant  in  this  letter 
of  James.  For  it  has  been  the  spirit  of 
Puritanism,  and  one  of  the  notes  that 
have  marked  its  life,  that  it  has  ever  been 
lifting  up  and  advocating  the  establish- 
ing here  on  earth  of  a  New  Testament 
theocracy,  to  complete  the  vision,  to  pre- 
pare the  way  for  the  coming  of  our  Lord. 
Now,  we  do  not  share  the  hopes  in  every 
particular  of  the  Puritans  who  desired 
a  theocracy  at  the  time  of  Cromwell, 
because  the  theocracy  that  they  desired 
had  very  marked  limitations,  and  be- 
cause we  have  an  instinctive  feeling  that 
any  such  theocracy  would  sooner  or  later, 
like  the  religious  society  of  that  time, 
prove  a  failure.  In  some  way  the  Jewish 
Christian  church  however,  has  never  lost 
hope  that  it  exists  to  found  a  theocracy. 


124        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

The  Jewish  Christian  church  fondly- 
believed  that  Christ  was  to  come  to 
Jerusalem,  appearing  in  person  to  estab- 
lish his  kingdom  ;  that  all  nations  would 
come  up  to  Jerusalem  ;  that  under  the 
banner  of  the  Messias  come  again  in 
power,  the  Christian  Church  might  know 
itself  redeemed  through  Judah ;  that,  the 
regenerated  tribes  once  more  restored,  the 
mission  of  the  Christ  would  be  completed. 
I  am  not  sure  that  Paul  did  not  share 
that  hope  in  his  early  ministry,  but,  as 
you  can  see  from  the  second  letter  to  the 
Corinthians,  and  from  his  later  writings, 
especially  the  pastoral  epistles,  that  hope 
had  taken  a  spiritualized  form,  just  as 
the  hope  of  the  Church  to-day  has  taken 
a  spiritualized  form,  and  we  no  longer 
desire  to  see  church  and  state  identified, 
doing  one  for  the  other  the  offices  of  that 
theocracy  we  may  have  once  desired. 
But  we  have  lost  something  indeed ;  we 
have    lost   much ;    and    our   position,    I 


ETHICAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.        1 25 

think,  will  have  to  be  taken  upon  higher 
ground  than  we  have  stood  on  yet.  We 
should  still  cherish  the  hope  of  the  the- 
ocracy ;  we  should  still  hope  for  such  a 
union  of  Church  and  State  that  the  lines 
will  run  so  parallel  that  there  will  be  no 
fear  of  friction,  no  fear  of  hypocrisy,  no 
fear  of  mere  formalism.  So  long  as  the 
State  has  secular  power  outside  the  in- 
fluences of  Christianity,  so  long  we  have 
not  as  a  church  done  our  full  duty.  We 
must  seek  to  permeate  the  State  with 
Christian  principles;  we  must  seek  to 
secure  the  State  for  Christ ;  we  must 
make  these  United  States  the  re-incarna- 
tion of  the  divine  spirit.  However  glori- 
ous the  stars  and  stripes  may  be,  how- 
ever right  that  we  sacrifice  our  life  for 
our  country,  we  must  see  to  it  that  the 
cross  of  Jesus  Christ  is  still  supreme ; 
and  the  best  offering  that  we  can  bring 
will  be  the  stars  and  stripes  baptized 
from  on  high,  washed  from  the  stains  of 


126         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

past  history,  that  these  United  States 
may  be  a  splendid  offering  brought  to 
Jehovah,  the  seal  of  the  triumph  of  the 
suffering  and  patience  of  our  Lord, — 
such  a  theocracy  as  the  kingdom  that 
passed  before  the  vision,  not  of  the  old 
Puritan  of  Cromwell's  time,  but  such  as 
passed  before  the  vision  of  the  inspired 
James.  He  too  has  a  message  to  the 
nations  concerning  the  kingdom  ;  he  too 
has  somewhat  to  say  of  a  national  right- 
eousness, and  of  the  kingdom  that  God 
is  building,  to  those  of  you  who  long  for 
the  righteousness  which  is  of  Christ. 
Let  us  feel  that  that  righteousness  is  to 
be  a  purifying  fire;  that  in  our  hearts  it 
is  to  burn  and  burn  until  our  lives  are 
moulded  into  the  form  of  the  life  of  Jesus 
Christ,  as  the  melted  iron  is  moulded. 
Let  us  feel  that  love  for  righteousness,  a 
burning  desire  to  hold  to  the  cross  of  our 
Saviour,  is  to  be  a  purifying  passion,  in- 
spiring us  and  speaking  to  us  as  the  voice 


ETHICAL    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.        1 27 

of  God  in  conscience,  making  it  impossi- 
ble for  us  to  swerve  from  the  path  of  duty, 
because  Jehovah,  our  God,  is  ever  present 
with  us  in  all  our  temptations,  strengthen- 
ing us  in  the  hour  of  struggle.  Is  there 
any  one  reading  this  who  has  not  made 
that  surrender?  Oh!  I  beseech  you  to 
make  surrender  of  your  life  to  this  Christ, 
unto  this  passion  for  righteousness  and 
purity,  that  you  may  feel  your  muscles 
braced  and  your  hearts  stirred  within  you 
to  seek  the  higher,  the  new,  the  diviner 
life,  the  breathings  and  whisperings  of 
which  are  now  moving  amongst  the  na- 
tions. Oh  !  may  God  grant  that  when 
the  time  comes  for  struggles  and  con- 
flicts, when  the  time  comes  for  the  estab- 
lishing of  the  completed  theocracy,  the 
inspiration  of  James  may  be  the  inspi- 
ration of  the  Church,  that  we  may  lift 
the  cross  as  the  banner  of  the  victory  of 
our  God. 


VII. 

THE   MYSTIC   TYPE   OF   CHRISTIANITY. 

No  man  hath  beheld  God  at  any  time :  if  we  love 
one  another,  God  abideth  in  us,  and  his  love  is 
perfected  in  us :  hereby  know  we  that  we  abide  in 
him,  and  he  in  us,  because  he  hath  given  us 
of  his  spirit.  —  i  John  iv.  12. 

TN  the  formation  of  primitive  Christian- 
ity Paul  has  only  one  possible  rival, 
and  that  is  John.  So  far  as  the  intel- 
lectual side  of  Christianity  is  concerned, 
Paul  stands  unrivalled  as  a  formative 
element  and  factor.  Probably  Peter  had 
a  more  active  part  in  the  formation  of 
the  external  organization  of  Christianity 
than  the  record  shows.  He  probably  did 
much  to  forward  the  formation  of  many 
churches,  without  leaving  large  records 
of  his  activity ;  for  it  is  scarcely  credible 
that    Peter   should   have    maintained    in 


MYSTIC    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.         1 29 

the  Church's  tradition  and  history  the 
place  he  has  upon  so  slender  a  founda- 
tion as  that  which  we  find  recorded  in 
the  New  Testament.  It  must  have  been 
very  largely  as  an  executive,  practical 
man,  that  he  left  his  mark  and  imprint 
upon  the  Church,  which  circumstance 
would  explain  perchance  that  it  was 
mainly  upon  the  Roman  church  that  he 
left  this  mark.  The  Roman  mind,  being 
practical  and  executive,  would  naturally 
fall  readily  under  the  influence  of  that 
particular  apostle,  to  whom  in  God's 
providence  possibly  had  been  committed 
something  of  the  formation  of  the  gov- 
ernment by  which  the  Church  was  to  be 
strengthened  and  consolidated.  How- 
ever that  may  be,  Peter  is  preserved 
rather  in  tradition  than  in  record,  but 
John  and  Paul  go  down  in  the  records 
as  the  two  main  formative  agents  in  or- 
ganized  Christianity.  They  were  men, 
however,  of  very  different  types.  John's 
9 


I30         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

limitations  were  rather  on  the  side  of 
that  logical,  philosophical,  and  intellec- 
tual character  which  was  so  pronounced 
in  Paul.  I  presume  that  John,  for  in- 
stance, would  have  had  comparatively 
little  influence  over  some  of  the  elements 
in  the  Church's  life  that  Paul  has  moulded. 
Indeed,  it  appears  that  in  the  third  and 
fourth  centuries  of  the  Roman  branch  of 
the  Church,  John  was  an  almost  forgotten 
factor.  In  the  Greek  church,  however, 
John  takes  the  place  that  in  the  Latin 
church  has  been  so  largely  taken  by  Paul. 
John  is  to  a  very  large  degree  the  domi- 
nant element  throughout  the  Greek  the- 
ology, which  has  been  so  neglected  by 
Protestant  theologians.  A  great  deal  of 
the  disturbance  in  the  theological  atmos- 
phere around  us  now  comes  from  the  fact 
that  there  has  been  a  revival  of  Greek 
theology  and  of  the  Greek  spirit  in 
Protestantism.  We  are  feeling  on  all 
sides    the    power   and   influence   of   this 


MYSTIC    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       131 

Greek  revival.  Once  before  the  Church 
felt  the  influence  of  a  pagan  renaissance 
of  Greek  thought  almost  absolutely  un- 
touched by  Christian  ideas.  To-day  we 
are  feeling  the  influence  of  the  Greek- 
Christian  thought  that  has  been  so  deeply 
and  permanently  affected  by  the  spirit  of 
John.  The  conception  of  the  Johannean 
gospel  has  opened  our  eyes  to  large 
realms  of  truth  entirely  neglected  in  the 
history  of  nineteen  centuries  of  Chris- 
tianity. Once  Dr.  Hitchcock  said,  to 
the  class  he  was  instructing  in  history, 
that  the  Church  had  seen  Petrine  theology 
in  her  organization,  and  Pauline  theology 
in  her  creeds,  and  now  he  felt,  though  he 
felt  it  only  dimly,  that  we  were  entering 
upon  a  third  period  of  theological  strug- 
gle, marked  by  the  ascendant  influence 
of  John.  He  thought  the  Johannean  type 
would  be  dominant  only  when  the  treas- 
ures buried  now  in  the  Johannean  writ- 
ings   had    become    the    treasures  of   the 


132         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

Church.  I  think  we  may  look  further, 
beyond  that  prophecy  even,  and  hope  for 
a  time  when  we  shall  see  the  Church 
doing  what  the  New  Testament  does, 
placing  the  elements  all  together,  find- 
ing for  them  all  their  proper  provinces, 
giving  to  every  type  of  thought  that 
has  its  source  in  the  divine  mind  its 
proper  place  as  a  formative  element  in 
the  Church's  life  and  organization,  and 
making  the  Church  the  expression  of  a 
national  longing  for  righteousness.  If 
only  we  do  that,  we  shall  find  that  we 
are  united  as  one  spirit  existing  under 
wide  diversity.  As  we  have  limitations 
or  capacity,  we  shall  enter  more  or  less 
fully  into  the  thought  of  the  entire  New 
Testament,  and  James  and  Peter,  and 
John  and  Paul  will  widen  and  instruct 
us,  giving  us  more  glorious  conceptions 
of  the  fulness  of  the  revelation  which  is 
in  Christ  Jesus  than  has  been  possible 
for  us   to    achieve   in    our   very    narrow 


MYSTIC    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       1 33 

conceptions  touching  the  New  Testa- 
ment revelation  of  God  as  it  is  in  Christ. 
We  shall  see  the  need  of  room  for  wide 
differences  of  opinion  and  statement. 

Were  we  to  depend  upon  John  simply, 
there  would  be  something  lacking  of  the 
practical  Christianity  which  we  saw  so 
pronouncedly  in  James,  and  the  state- 
ments of  James  are  open  to  serious  criti- 
cism taken  alone.  John  lays  down  the 
law  of  love.  He  emphasizes  it  as  it  had 
not  been  emphasized  before  in  New  Tes- 
tament literature.  But  if  you  will  read 
John  through,  the  fourth  gospel,  and 
the  three  letters  assuming  the  Johannean 
authorship,  you  will  be  struck  with  the 
thought  that  there  is  a  class  of  minds 
who  would  find  his  teaching  extremely 
unpractical.  These  persons  would  say 
to  themselves,  I  have  no  doubt,  "  I  feel 
it  is  true  I  ought  to  love  my  brother,  but 
how  am  I  to  love  my  brother  ?  How  am 
I  to  show  my  love  ?  "     Were  we  to  rely 


134         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

upon  John  alone,  we  should  have  very 
little  light  upon  that  question.  We  shall 
have  then  to  turn  to  James,  and  find  that 
he  translates  into  very  strong  language 
the  rules  and  spiritual  considerations  of 
John,  and  gives  voice  to  the  practical 
every-day  application  of  the  truth  which 
John  saw  in  such  fulness  and  with  such 
spiritual  clearness.  So  it  is  very  well  for 
us  that  we  are  not  left  simply  to  John  for 
a  conception  of  that  revelation  of  God  in 
Jesus  Christ.  It  is  a  great  blessing  that 
we  have  John  to  give  us  such  a  spiritual 
interpretation  of  the  historic  man  Christ 
Jesus  as  we  cannot  find  even  in  Paul, 
because  Paul  knew  only  the  risen  Christ, 
and  such  as  we  cannot  find  even  in  the 
synoptic  gospels,  because  the  writers  of 
the  synoptic  gospels  were  men  of  limited 
horizons  in  many  directions,  and  of  little 
comprehension  along  some  lines  of  what 
the  real  teaching  of  Jesus  was ;  which  we 
cannot   get  in  James  either,  because   of 


MYSTIC    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.        1 35 

the  Judaistic  limitations  which  prevented 
James  from  entering  into  the  fulness  of 
the  spiritual  truth  which  we  find  to  be 
in  John.  John  was  the  beloved  disciple. 
I  do  not  believe  that  was  because  of  his 
marked  gentleness  of  character,  as  some 
have  thought,  for  we  find  that  John  is 
characterized  as  the  Son  of  Thunder. 
He  is  one  also  of  the  impulsive  disciples. 
He  it  was  who  would  have  called  down 
fire  from  heaven  to  avenge  an  insult. 
He  was  the  beloved  disciple  surely  be- 
cause he  leaned  upon  Jesus'  bosom, 
because  he  was  able  to  enter  into  the 
thought  of  Christ  and  comprehend  his 
mystic  sayings.  He  did  not  need  to 
have  the  proverbs  unfolded  to  him  as  the 
rather  weaker  intelligence  of  the  other 
disciples  required  they  should  be.  He 
was  one  of  that  inner  circle  into  which 
Peter  was  taken,  James  and  John  and 
Peter  going  with  their  Master  into  the 
presence  of  the   Transfiguration  !    going 


I36         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

with  their  Master  into  the  death  cham- 
ber !  sharing  the  secret  counsels  of  the 
Master,  who  could  not  unfold  his  whole 
teachings  to  the  dull  and  somewhat  com- 
monplace minds  of  the  other  disciples 
round  about  him. 

John  knew  Christ,  he  felt  Christ,  he 
intuitively  leaped  to  the  conclusion  even 
before  Christ  finished  all  his  teaching. 
He  alone  was  able  to  give  us  such  con- 
versations as  that  between  Nicodemus 
and  Christ.  Mark  could  hardly  have  faith- 
fully portrayed  that  scene.  It  is  doubt- 
ful whether  Matthew  would  have  under- 
stood it  much  better  than  Nicodemus, 
where  we  find  Christ  opening  to  the 
mind  of  Nicodemus  the  mysteries  of  that 
spiritual  contact  between  the  spirit  of 
God  and  the  spirit  of  man  which  is  the 
contact  of  history,  of  which  history  is  but 
the  unfolding.  It  was  John  that  was 
able  best  to  enter  into  the  mysteries  of 
that  new  birth,  which  means  the  regene- 


MYSTIC    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       1 37 

ration  and  changing  of  the  whole  thought 
of  man  about  God,  and  the  formation  of 
that  character  which  is  the  Divine  intent 
from  the  beginning.  Who  else  could 
have  riven  us  the  scene  of  the  woman  of 
Samaria  ?  And  there  are  often  touches 
which  we  should  be  surprised,  I  think,  to 
find  in  Luke  or  in  Mark  or  in  Matthew, 
—  touches  of  spiritual  insight,  of  the 
comprehension  of  the  fulness  of  the  gos- 
pel of  our  Lord  and  Saviour  which  strikes 
us  as  being  unique,  and  these  touches 
mark  at  once  the  teaching  of  that  apostle 
who  had  entered  more  than  any  other 
into  the  spiritual  character  of  our  Lord 
and  Saviour. 

And  so  it  is  that  the  picture  we  have 
of  Christ  from  the  hand  of  John  deals 
mainly  with  his  Jerusalem  ministry,  be- 
cause in  his  Jerusalem  ministry  Christ  un- 
folded more  than  at  any  other  time  the 
real  spiritual  Messianic  kingdom  which 
he  had  come  to  found.     It  was  the  Jeru- 


138         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

salem  ministry  that  most  revealed  to  John 
the  spiritual  thought  he  unfolds  to  us. 
Christ  is  for  him  the  divine  Messias  who 
had  come  to  his  own  and  his  own  re- 
ceived him  not;  who  poured  out  his  soul 
in  the  death  agony  of  the  wondrous 
prayer  which  John  has  given  to  us  as  a 
priceless  treasure  in  the  seventeenth 
chapter  of  his  gospel.  I  think  we  should 
be  surprised  to  find  in  Mark  or  in  Mat- 
thew or  in  James  such  a  chapter  as  the 
fourteenth  of  John  ;  and  yet  surely  with- 
out the  fourteenth  of  John  there  would 
be  lacking  much  of  the  revelation  of  the 
depth  of  the  love  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  the 
assurance  that  was  in  him  of  union  with 
the  Father,  which  was  from  the  begin- 
ning and  unto  eternity.  "  I  am  in  the 
Father  and  the  Father  in  me.  If  ye  have 
seen  me,  ye  have  seen  the  Father.  Why 
sayest  thou  then,  Show  us  the  Father  ?  " 

Any  one  who  has  attentively  studied 
the  language  of   the  fourth  gospel   will 


MYSTIC    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       1 39 

see  at  once  that  there  can.  be  little 
question  as  to  the  genuine  character  of 
the  three  letters,  whatever  he  may  think 
of  the  Apocalypse.  They  are  in  the 
spirit,  nay,  they  are  in  the  very  language 
of  the  fourth  gospel.  Whoever  wrote 
the  one,  wrote  the  others.  In  the  first 
letter  of  John,  we  have  the  emphasis  laid 
again  and  again  upon  that  which  formed 
for  John  the  basis  of  his  religious  life,  the 
enthusiasm  of  love.  What  is  Christian- 
ity? It  is  impossible  for  us  to  define  it 
in  a  word.  We  have  to  define  it  as  the 
contact  in  and  through  Christ  with  God. 
We  might  also  define  it  in  its  outward 
aspect  as  the  new  enthusiasm  for  good 
that  was  brought  into  the  world  by  the 
divine  manifestation  of  the  Christ.  It  is 
enthusiasm,  the  divine  enthusiasm  of  love, 
which  John  makes  the  basis  of  his  mes- 
sage to  all  time. 

We  cannot  live  for  the  most  part  upon 
what  is  known  as  doctrine,  useful  as  doc- 


I40        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

trine  is  in  its  place  ;  we  cannot  live  upon 
forms  and  ceremonies,  useful  as  forms  and 
ceremonies  may  be.  We  cannot  live 
upon  law,  although  law  has  its  place.  If 
we  are  to  be  loving  Christians,  if  we  are 
really  to  do  the  work  of  God,  our  souls 
must  be  stamped  with  something  of  the 
same  divine  enthusiasm  which  will  burn 
away  within  us  the  dross,  which  will  make 
us  the  children  of  the  loving  Father, 
which  will  send  us  seeking  over  the  wide 
world  for  the  service  of  the  Master,  that 
we  may  be  united  with  him  in  this  divine 
love,  and  feel  that  in  love  alone  can  we 
find  union  with  the  Father,  that  only 
through  love  can  we  know  what  God  is, 
for  God  is  love. 

This  is,  I  think,  the  real  meaning  of 
John's  message.  His  message  was  an  em- 
phasis upon  love,  —  the  law  of  love  is  the 
law  of  life.  In  one  of  the  Buddhist  writ- 
ings, the  Suttas,  that  especially  sets  forth 
the  message  of   Buddha   to  the  learned 


MYSTIC    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.        141 

Brahmins,  there  is  a  wonderful  chapter 
upon  what  is  known  as  Universal  Love, 
and  Buddha  describes  universal  love  as 
being  a  factor  in  life  which  the  learning 
of  the  Brahmins  had  left  out.  Confucius 
dwells  upon  love  as  one  of  the  factors  of 
life.  We  have  in  Confucius  the  Golden 
Rule  on  its  negative  sides.  The  Avesta 
teaches  love  as  one  of  the  elements  out 
of  which  the  perfect  world  is  formed  and 
the  absence  of  which  marks  the  lower 
world,  which  forms  the  dualism  of  the 
Zend-Avesta  system.  But  nowhere  that 
I  have  been  able  to  discover,  in  Buddhist 
literature,  or  in  the  writings  of  Confu- 
cius, or  in  Plato,  or  anywhere  else,  is  love 
laid  down  as  John  lays  it  down,  not  only 
as  a  law  and  element  in  life,  but  as  the 
law  of  life,  the  very  essence  of  life,  the 
very  being  of  God,  the  very  evidence  of 
God  to  the  hearts  of  men  that  He  really 
exists.  There  is  an  infidelity  which  is 
the  infidelity  of  a  half-truth,  an  infidelity 


142         TOWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

that  would  try  to  make  us  believe  that 
God  is  something  else,  that  he  is  sov- 
ereignty, or  decrees,  or  law,  or  judgment, 
with  love  thrown  in  to  temper  all  these 
things.  This  is  the  pagan  conception, 
resulting  always  in  some  form  of  either 
intellectual  or  practical  dualism.  We 
have  had  many  a  caricature  of  God.  Ac- 
cording to  the  picture  that  John  has 
drawn  of  him,  God  is  not  decree,  he  is 
not  sovereignty,  he  is  not  law  primarily, 
he  is  love,  and  his  very  decrees  are  the 
outcome  of  his  love.  He  is  sovereignty 
because  he  has  proclaimed  the  sover- 
eignty of  love,  and  this  law  of  love  is 
the  law  of  life.  This  is  the  message  that 
is  revealed  to  the  Church,  the  law  of  love, 
the  emphasis  upon  which  comes  to  us 
with  tremendous  and  distinct  power  as 
we  open  the  pages  of  John  and  find  that 
he  emphasizes  only  more  distinctly  and 
exclusively  that  which  Paul  too  recog- 
nized as  central  in  his  system,  which  James 


MYSTIC    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.         I43 

too  recognized  as  central  for  him,  which 
unites  the  writings  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment into  one  splendid  chorus  of  praise 
to  Jehovah  who  sitteth  on  high,  —  which 
is  light !  which  is  love !  which  is  God ! 
Walk  ye  in  it. 

The  second  characteristic  of  John's 
teaching  is  the  emphasis  he  places  upon 
what  we  describe  as  the  intuitive  type  of 
Christian  character.  Paul  is  reasoning 
with  the  Romans  and  the  Jews.  He  sought 
to  lead  the  intellects  of  the  Romans  and 
Jews  to  enter  into  the  secrets  of  the 
Most  High.  For  Paul  there  were  many 
entrances  into  the  mysteries  of  God's 
reigning.  There  was  the  historical.  His- 
tory was  to  Paul  the  steady  unfolding  of 
the  life  of  God.  Philosophy  had  mean- 
ing for  Paul  as  an  entrance  into  the 
secrets  of  the  Most  Hi^h  under  the  £uid- 
ance  of  God's  spirit.  Law  had  for  Paul 
special  meaning  as  an  entrance  into  the 
method  of  the  Divine  Life.     For  John 


144       POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

these  things  may  have  had  theoretically 
their  place,  but  for  him  and  for  his  peculiar 
temperament  there  was  practically  one 
access  only.  He  knew  God,  —  "  For  I 
have  beheld  him;  I  have  seen  him." 
He  does  not  need  to  dwell  upon  history 
or  philosophy  or  law.  That  might  help 
others,  that  was  necessary  to  others,  no 
doubt ;  but  John  had  seen  Christ ;  he 
needed  no  other  testimony.  He  had 
beheld  him.  He  knew  him,  not  as  Paul, 
who  had  a  vision,  who  knew  best  the 
risen  Christ,  and  then  had  been  strength- 
ened throughout  the  years  of  his  pilgrim- 
age, but  because  he  had  sat  with  him: 
"  The  things  which  our  eyes  have  be- 
held, that  which  we  teach,  that  which  we 
know  and  declare  unto  you  to  be  the 
manifestation  of  God."  So  he  entered  at 
once  without  process  into  the  secrets  of 
the  Most  High.  There  must  be  that 
element  in  all  Christian  life.  I  do  not 
suppose  it  is  equally  developed  in  all  of 


MYSTIC    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       1 45 

us.  Some  of  us  are  sceptical  by  nature ; 
if  we  find  God  at  all  it  must  be  through 
weary  reasoning,  walking  with  tired  feet 
along  the  beaten  road  of  controversy. 
But  those  more  blessed,  those  sometimes 
whom  the  world  has  despised,  the  mys- 
tics, the  women  in  their  solitude  and  in 
their  suffering,  tender  children  in  their 
ignorance,  and  sufferers  on  beds  of  pain, 
to  whom  such  weary  wandering  would 
be  impossible,  these  have  known  the 
blessedness  of  entering  at  once,  as  John 
did,  into  the  life  and  love  of  him  whom 
to  see  was  to  know  and  believe,  because 
God  had  given  him  of  his  Spirit.  God 
is  love.  His  love  is  perfected  in  us. 
"  Hereby  know  we  that  we  abide  in  him, 
and  he  in  us,  because  he  hath  given  us  of 
his  Spirit."  Shall  we  not  sometimes  in 
the  heavenly  world,  if  we  are  permitted 
to  reflect  upon  our  past,  wonder  at  some 
of  the  processes  that  we  were  pleased  to 

call    intellectual    by    which    we    tried   to 
10 


I46        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

understand  the  workings  of  the  divine 
mind  ?  All  around  us,  was  God  and  we 
knew  it  not;  all  around  us  were  oppor- 
tunities of  love  that  we  never  entered  into. 
All  around  was  the  life  of  God,  and  be- 
cause, forsooth,  it  walked  and  talked  and 
spoke  as  we  did,  we  never  knew  it ! 

The  early  Church  had  as  its  spirit  that 
which  the  Church  in  the  moments  of  her 
forgetfulness  and  infidelity  has  some- 
times not  fully  realized,  that  Christianity 
is  a  divine  inspiration,  a  divine  contact, 
—  not  an  inspiration  for  the  apostles  only, 
not  in  the  New  Testament  only,  not  only 
in  the  first  three  centuries  of  the  Church, 
but  a  divine  contact  now  and  always.  "  I 
am  with  you  always,  even  unto  the  end  of 
the  world."  The  question  for  our  consid- 
eration is,  What  is  the  character  of  your 
inspiration  ?  rather  than,  What  is  the 
character  of  the  inspiration  of  the  canon- 
ical books?  We  are  far  more  likely  to 
be  unsound  and  infidel  on  the  question 


MYSTIC    TYPE    OF    CHRISTIANITY.       1 47 

of  the  possibility  of  God's  inspiring  you 
and   me   to   do   his    work    in    the    world, 
than  on   the  question   of   the  possibility 
of  his  having  inspired   those  who  have 
passed  to  their  rest,  and   have   left   the 
record  of  their  inspiration  as  a  heritage 
to  God's  children.     We  need  to  feel  the 
power  that  John  felt,  the  baptism  of  the 
Holy    Spirit    bringing    us    into    contact 
with  God  the  Father  of  spirits,  that  we 
be  no  dead  memories  of  the  past,  but  be 
living   channels    of   the    present,    telling 
men  of  the  judgment  that  is  round  about 
us,  speaking  to  men's  hearts  of  the  awful 
and  fearful  neglects  and  dangers  of  the 
present,   and   the   consequences  of   such 
neglects  in  the  past. 

John  knew  him  because  he  had  seen 
him.  We,  too,  shall  be  able  to  make  men 
see  Christ  when  we  too  have  beheld  him, 
and  have  entered  into  the  secret  places 
of  the  Most  High  God  through  contact 
of   our   spirit   with    Jesus    Christ.      We 


I48         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

must  be  the  incarnation  of  God's  living 
love.  We  must  know  God  as  Love,  be- 
cause he  has  revealed  himself  in  our 
spirits,  and  daily  we  take  up  our  cross 
and  follow  him,  becoming  like  him,  see- 
ing him  as  he  is,  knowing  him,  having 
him  dwell  in  us,  and  his  Spirit  to  direct 
us  forever  and  ever  more. 

This  is  the  message  of  John ;  and  it  is 
not  a  past  message ;  it  is  a  message  to 
our  hearts  to-day.  Would  you  know 
God  ?  Know  him  as  Love.  Would  you 
feel  him?  Have  him  in  you.  Would 
you  live  the  life  that  God  would  have 
you  live, —  the  life  of  love  ?  "  If  any  man 
say,  I  love  God,  and  hateth  his  brother, 
he  is  a  liar.  For  he  that  loveth  not  his 
brother  whom  he  hath  seen,  how  can  he 
love  God,  whom  he  hath  not  seen  ? " 
May  God  help  us  to  feel  the  inspiration, 
to  know  the  baptism,  to  walk  in  the  love 
and  light  that  is  reflected  from  the  face 
of  Jesus  Christ  our  Master. 


VIII. 

THE   THREE   CROSSES   ON   CALVARY. 

And  one  of  the  malefactors  which  were  hanged  railed 
on  him,  saying,  Art  ?iot  thou  the  Christ 7  save  thy- 
self and  us.  But  the  other  answered,  a?id  rebuking 
him  said,  Dost  thou  not  even  fear  God,  seeing  thou 
art  in  the  same  condemnation  ?  And  we  indeed 
justly  ;  for  we  receive  the  due  reward  of  our  deeds : 
but  this  man  hath  done  nothing  amiss.  —  Luv\ 
xxiii.  39-43- 

It  was  a  strange  circumstance  that 
thus  linked  the  life  and  death  of  those 
two  unknown  robbers  with  the  life  of 
one  who  was  to  form  the  centre  of  his- 
tory. We  do  not  even  know  their 
names.  The  traditions  about  them  are 
somewhat  confused ;  but  we  find  them 
here  the  victims  with  Christ  of  the 
cruelty  and  barbarism  of  the  age  in 
which  they  lived.     They  are  called  rob- 


I5O        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

bers,  and  no  doubt  belonged  to  that  class 
for  which  Barrabas  stood,  half  robber, 
half  rebel  against  the  existing  condition 
of  things,  a  product  of  their  time,  much 
as  Robin  Hood  was  a  product  of  his 
time,  much  as  the  bandits  of  Sicily  to- 
day are  a  product  of  the  misgovernment 
in  that  part  of  the  world.  For,  after  all, 
character  is  a  strange  synthesis  of  vari- 
ous factors,  and  it  is  quite  impossible  for 
us  to  analyze  a  character  exactly  and  deal 
out  to  each  factor  its  particular  share  of 
importance.  There  is  heredity  of  which 
we  have  heard  so  much,  and  there  is  also 
a  personality  of  which  we  are,  I  have  no 
doubt,  soon  to  hear  quite  as  much  as 
once  we  heard  of  heredity,  as  one  of  the 
foremost  evolutionists  of  Germany  has 
already  pointed  out  that  there  could  be 
no  progress  unless  there  were  new  factors 
in  some  way  evolved  out  of  the  old,  for 
unless  there  are  some  new  factors,  there 
can   be    no   advance   over   heredity  and 


THREE    CROSSES    ON    CALVARY.        151 

environment.  You  cannot  take  out 
more  than  you  find  in. 

We  shall  be  glad  to  call  that  creative 
factor,  personality  or  will,  the  element 
that  gives  responsibility,  the  element 
that  should  sit  enthroned,  that  should 
use  all  circumstances  but  as  a  means 
to  work  out  the  highest  in  human  life. 
There  are  social  conditions,  environ- 
ment, and  education.  These,  too,  are 
important  factors,  but  if  we  permit  the 
will  to  be  enslaved  by  lust,  selfishness, 
and  other  passions,  these  things  become 
dominant,  and  we  become  slaves  to  those 
that  should  be  but  our  servants  in  the 
progress  of  righteousness. 

So,  no  doubt,  it  would  only  be  the  al- 
mighty wisdom  of  God  that  could  separ- 
ate, in  the  life  of  this  poor  thief  hanging 
in  his  misery,  the  victim  of  the  cruelty  of 
the  time,  between  the  factors  that  went 
to  make  him  the  character  that  he  was. 
Social  suffering  and  environment  had 
something  to  do  with  it.     No  doubt  in- 


152         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

herent  tendencies  had  something  to  do 
with  it.  No  doubt  the  surrender  of  his 
will  had  much  to  do  with  the  melancholy 
state  in  which  he  finds  himself.  What 
interests  us  most,  however,  is  to  find 
what  is  the  effect  of  this  his  treatment, 
what  is  the  result  upon  the  man  of  the 
measures  that  society  took  to  prevent 
him  from  being  any  more  a  menace  to 
the  safety  of  the  community.  We  find 
that  the  poor  fellow  is  but  the  more  hard- 
ened and  injured  by  the  course  that  is 
taken,  and  the  presence  of  Christ  but 
seems  to  stir  the  ill  feelings  within  him 
all  the  more,  and  he  delights  in  railing 
at  his  fellow-victim  upon  the  cross.  In 
the  gospel  there  is  no  hint  of  the  reason 
for  the  state  of  mind  in  which  he  finds 
himself.  It  must  have  been  some  bitter 
thought,  or  some  very  strange  uncon- 
scious feeling  in  him  which  suggested 
his  railing  cries.  He  might  perhaps  say 
to  himself :  "  Had   I  only  possessed  the 


THREE    CROSSES    ON    CALVARY.       1 53 

personal  magnetism  of  that  leader;  had 
I  only  been  able  to  work  the  miracles 
that  he  claimed  to  do ;  if  I  only  had 
obtained  the  ear  of  the  multitude  as  he 
did ;  had  a  party  in  North  Galilee  been 
at  my  call,  —  do  you  think  that  I  would 
have  submitted  to  the  Roman  power  as 
he  has  cravenly  submitted  to  it?  Do 
you  think  that  I  would  have  permitted 
myself  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  those 
who  hate  me  and  my  people  ?  I  at  least 
bared  my  sword  !  I  at  least  haunted  the 
highways,  and  so  long  as  my  weakness 
would  let  me,  I  fought  the  tyranny  that 
is  crushing  the  Jewish  people.  I  did  my 
little  best  to  make  known  that  there  was 
still  manhood  in  Judaism.  But  this  poor 
teacher,  he  claims  to  be  the  Christ,  the 
Saviour,  the  Messias !  If  he  is  the  Mes- 
sias,  let  him  come  down  from  the  cross 
and  save  himself  and  us!  But  how  can 
I  follow  any  such  craven  leadership  ?  I 
am  glad  that  the  multitudes  cried,  ■  Away 
with  him  ! '  " 


154        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

Such  a  process  of  thought  would  no 
doubt  do  much  not  only  to  harden  the 
man's  heart,  but  to  blind  him  to  the 
high  meaning  of  Christ's  death ;  and 
physical  agony  and  defeat  and  humilia- 
tion and  shame  only  deepened  and  em- 
phasized all  that  was  bad  in  the  man. 
His  conflicts  with  society,  his  outlawry, 
his  wildly  obeyed  impulses  to  disobedi- 
ence, these  things  crowded  in  upon  his 
life,  and  all  the  worst  elements  of  the 
man's  character  were  but  intensified  by 
his  suffering. 

That  cross  of  Calvary  is  an  example  of 
unsanctified  suffering  such  as  the  world 
has  very  often  seen  since.  There  are 
those  who  to-day  are  suffering,  as  there 
have  been  those  who  have  suffered  all 
down  history,  from  the  injustice,  wrongs, 
and  barbarism  of  the  time.  This  suffer- 
ing has  sometimes  been  but  dimly  under- 
stood. Sometimes  it  has  found  a  voice 
in    a   leadership  saying   very    much   the 


THREE    CROSSES    ON    CALVARY.         1 55 

same  things  as  were  on  the  lips  of  those 
poor  sufferers  on  Calvary.  This  unsanc- 
tified  suffering  does  but  harden  men's 
hearts.  There  are  many  to-day  just  as 
bitter  as  these  thieves  who  rebelled 
against  Rome!  And  in  all  a^es  there 
have  been  poor  criminals  who  in  their 
wild  despair  have  wreaked  savage  ven- 
geance upon  those  who  have  thus  ignor- 
antly  and  harshly  entreated  them.  We 
know  very  well  how  easy  it  is  for  men  to 
emphasize  all  that  is  wrong  in  the  social 
condition  round  about,  how  easy  and 
how  natural  it  is  for  us  to  lay  upon  the 
social  condition  and  environment,  upon 
the  things  that  are  external,  the  blame  of 
what  they  and  we  are.  When  we  are 
prosperous  and  successful  in  our  business 
and  things  go  well  with  us,  when  every- 
thing is  very  much  as  we  should  plan  it, 
then  we  pat  ourselves  upon  the  back  and 
say,  "  See  how  shrewd  and  clever  a  busi- 
ness  man   I  am !     What  wonderful  pro- 


156         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

fessional  success  I  have !  How  well  I 
have  dealt  with  the  circumstances  of  my 
life  !  "  But  when  the  adversary  overtakes 
us,  when  adversity  enters  into  our  soul, 
then  we  look  outside  ourselves  for  the 
explanation  of  our  misfortunes,  because 
we  cannot  bear  to  divide  the  responsibil- 
ity as  it  ought  to  be  divided  between  the 
things  outside  and  the  things  within. 
And  to-day  all  the  factors  that  have  dis- 
turbed human  history  and  soaked  it  in 
blood  and  selfishness  are  at  work  in  our 
land.  There  is  danger  of  our  adopting 
to-day  merely  that  which  Rome  sought 
to  adopt  as  a  cure  for  all  the  evils.  To-day 
there  is  danger  of  lack,  or  even  of  entire 
absence,  of  sympathy  with  those  who  suf- 
fer, with  those  who  are  wronged,  with 
those  who  feel  with  fearful  bitterness  and 
passion  all  their  wrongs ;  and  it  is  an 
awful  condition  of  things  when  these 
wrongs  are  driven  home  on  the  one  side, 
and  those    who   are  more    or   less  con- 


THREE  CROSSES  ON  CALVARY.    1 57 

sciously  oppressing  the  weak  are  out  of 
touch  with  them,  and  hardening  their 
hearts  have  sought  to  array  themselves 
against  them. 

I  remember  once  a  passionate,  nervous 
boy,  in  ill  health,  being  tormented  in 
mere  play  by  two  or  three  stronger  than 
he.  I  remember  the  passionate  fury  and 
hate  that  burnt  in  that  boys  face,  a  sense 
of  helplessness  and  wrong  no  doubt  that 
changed  everything  in  him.  There  was 
murder  in  his  heart.  It  was  only  weak- 
ness that  prevented  him  doing  anything 
to  wreak  savage  vengeance.  At  last, 
springing  at  one  of  those  who  were  his 
tormentors,  he  half  drew  and  half  flung 
him  over  the  stairs  with  himself,  and  they 
fell  down  together.  I  remember,  I  shall 
never  forget  it,  the  white,  drawn  face  of 
my  comrade  as  I  saw  one  limb  was 
doubled  under  him  and  he  could  not 
move,  and  I  thought  how  easily  that  fall 
might    have    killed     him.      Then,   alas! 


I58         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

when  it  was  too  late,  remorse  came. 
Oh  !  the  passions  that  are  roused  in 
hearts  that  burn  and  cry  and  curse  all 
the  more  as  their  wrong  is  seen.  And 
when  force  meets  force,  when  the  conflict 
is  over  and  the  French  Revolution  has 
done  its  worst,  then  superior  shrewdness 
and  force  has  but  to  stretch  on  crueller 
crosses  the  weaker  elements  they  have 
wronged. 

So  history  has  still  the  cross  of  Cal- 
vary, still  hears  the  cry  of  the  poor  thief 
railing  in  his  misery  at  the  helpless  vic- 
tim whom  he  would  at  one  time  gladly, 
no  doubt,  have  summoned  to  his  aid  if 
that  aid  had  been  the  sword  and  revenge. 
And  then  there  is  the  other  cross,  with 
the  other  victim  of  the  same  passions  and 
selfishness  of  his  time.  He,  too,  railed 
at  first  at  the  Christ  in  their  midst,  but 
some  word  of  Christ's  went  to  his  heart, 
or  some  look  of  Christ's  won  his  soul, 
and  he  ceased  his  railing,  and  even  re- 


THREE    CROSSES    ON    CALVARY.        1 59 

buked  his  fellow  sufferer :  "  He  indeed 
without  sin,  but  we  justly."  He  takes 
it  all  to  himself,  all  the  bitterness  that 
might  have  had  some  legitimate  place  as 
over  against  the  wrongs  he  was  suffering. 
For  no  crime  gives  any  man  a  right  to 
torture  his  fellow  beings  as  the  cross 
tortured  them.  But  he  has  forgotten 
that.  He  feels  his  own  sin.  The  justice 
of  the  sentence  seems  to  him  absolute  in 
the  presence  of  that  which  rose  over  his 
soul.  "  We  indeed  justly."  No  doubt 
he  contrasted  in  some  half-conscious 
way  the  wild  scenes  of  violence  upon 
the  highroads,  and  the  willing  submission 
of  this  victim  in  the  midst,  and  he  sur- 
renders his  soul  to  the  Christ.  There 
was  no  one  there  to  instruct  him  in  the 
mysteries  of  Nicene  orthodoxy.  There 
was  no  one  there  to  tell  him  what  the 
meaning  of  the  words  he  had  just  heard 
was.  There  was  no  one  there  to  explain 
to  him  the  philosophy  of  salvation.     He 


l6o        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

only  knew  that  here  was  one  to  whom 
he  could  surrender  his  soul :  "  Lord, 
remember  me  when  thou  comest  into  thy 
kingdom." 

Oh  !  what  must  it  have  been  thus  to 
share  the  sufferings  of  Christ,  —  thus 
to  be  a  help  in  the  last  agonies  of  the 
one  perfect  hero  of  the  world's  his- 
tory ;  thus  to  strengthen  the  Christ 
even  by  a  word  when  all  others  mocked 
him ;  to  give  the  word  of  cheer  and 
comfort  that  this  poor  robber  must  have 
given  him ;  thus  to  give,  even  in  the 
midst  of  his  death  agony,  the  last  al- 
legiance !  Splendid  was  it,  indeed,  thus 
to  share  the  sufferings  of  Christ,  and 
to  enter  with  him  at  once  through  the 
opened  door !  "  To-day  thou  shalt  be 
with  me  in  Paradise  !  "  Thus  he  heard 
the  Saviour's  voice  speaking,  throwing 
open  the  door  of  heaven  and  letting  him 
in.  Oh,  what  a  difference  in  the  sanctified 
suffering  of  this  other  cross  of  Calvary! 


THREE  CROSSES  ON  CALVARY.    l6l 

For    any    suffering    either    hardens    or 

softens.     It  is  one  or  the  other.     Either 

the   rain  steals   into   the  earth,   watering 

the    roots    and  making   them  glad,  or  it 

beats  it  harder  and  harder  as  it  falls ;  it 

is  always  one  or  the  other.     The  world's 

suffering  will  do  for  the  masses  and  for 

you    one    of   two    things;    either   it  will 

harden  and  drive  you  away  from  the  real 

life,   or  with  broken  and   contrite   hearts 

you  will  find,  in  the  sorrow  of  the  world 

and    in   the   tears    which    you    shed,  the 

entrance  into  the  real  life,  the  life  that  is 

hid  in  Christ. 

Which  would  you  sooner  be,  Pilate,  or 

that  thief?     Now,  with  all  history  behind 

you,  which  would  you  rather  be,  the  proud 

Jewish   hierarchy,  or  that  robber  whose 

very  name  is  unknown  ?     No  justice  was 

done  to  him  ;  no  doubt  the  crowd  reviled 

him  as  before.     Even  religious  tradition 

does  not  do  justice  to  the  poor  fellow,  for 

this  is  the  only  gospel  that  marks  the  fact 
ii 


1 62        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

that  he  turned  to  Christ.  But  he  had 
Christ  in  his  heart,  and  in  the  touch  of 
that  unseen  hand  he  had  found  the 
real  life  that  passeth  not  away,  —  a  peace 
which  the  world  could  not  give,  which 
the  world  could  not  take  away  even  by  its 
cruellest  cross,  but  which  is  from  ever- 
lasting to  everlasting. 

Then  there  was  the  cross  that  formed 
the  centre  of  this  picture,  with  the  Christ 
praying  not  for  himself  only,  but  for  all 
of  us  in  the  loneliness  and  bitterness  of 
apparent  defeat.  It  w7ere  something  to 
defy  those  who  are  greater  and  stronger, 
and  to  die  fighting ;  but  to  be  hurried 
away  in  the  midst  of  the  night,  to  be 
stealthily  dealt  with,  to  be  crucified  before 
men  could  know  of  it,  ah,  that  was  hard ! 
In  the  solitude  of  the  cross  there  was  the 
shame  and  agony  of  defeat,  of  broken 
plans,  of  purposes  thrown  aside  ;  it  was 
the  trial  of  Christ's  faith.  "  My  God  !  my 
God  !  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  ?  " 


THREE    CROSSES    ON    CALVARY.        1 63 

We  cannot  suffer  as  Christ  did  in  all 
points,  for  he  was  without  sin,  and  we 
never  to  all  eternity  shall  forget  the  sin 
that  we  have  done.  We  shall  never  want 
to.  Some  of  you  have  listened  to  the 
strains  of  the  Ninth  Symphony.  The 
music  opens  with  an  impatient  struggle 
with  fate,  then  in  calmer  melancholy  the 
music  grows  very  simple,  very  rhythmic, 
but  extremely  delicate.  Then  you  notice 
deeper  tones  and  gradual  earnestness, 
until  at  last  all  is  caught  up  and  swept 
together  in  one  last  glorious  outburst  of 
song.  But  even  then,  if  you  have  listened 
closely,  you  can  still  hear  the  refrain  of 
the  minor  note  that  sings  to  the  very  last, 
giving  to  the  whole  the  earnestness  and 
tenderness  that  makes  it  the  most  perfect 
of  all  music. 

We  shall  enter  into  Paradise  with  God. 
We  shall  know  ourselves  forgiven,  freely 
forgiven,  without  condition  and  without 
price,  —  not  on  the  basis  of  any  belief, 
not  on  the  basis  of  any  opinion,  not  on 


164         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

the  basis  of  any  surrender.  We  are  for- 
given freely  ;  all  he  asks  is  that  we  walk 
in  the  forgiven  life,  that  we  feel  the 
heart  of  love  going  out,  loving  men  even 
as  we  have  been  loved.  But  even  when 
we  join,  as  we  may  join,  in  the  Paradise 
of  our  God,  there  still  will  be  given  to 
our  song  a  note  of  earnestness.  We 
have  been  forgiven  freely  indeed,  but  our 
hearts  must  go  out  over  the  world's 
suffering,  incarnate  in  the  sign  of  the 
cross.  This  suffering  is  our  doing,  its 
cross  we  must  take  up  daily,  but  with 
the  joy  of  deliverance.  It  is  to  this  cross 
that  you  and  I  are  to  be  consecrated. 
There  is  suffering  about  us.  There  is 
wild  despair  in  the  world.  There  are 
awful  wrongs.  There  are  fearful  iniqui- 
ties. How  shall  we  go  forward  ?  With 
the  bayonet  ?  With  the  sword  ?  With 
the  cross  on  which  we  have  drawn  and 
tortured  those  that  rebel  against  the 
authority  which  taunts  them  with  weak- 
ness,  knowing   that    at  last  in  the  ever- 


THREE    CROSSES    ON    CALVARY.        1 65 

lasting  strife  superior  intelligence  and 
superior  force  must  ever  in  the  end 
crucify  the  forces  of  those  who  seek  in 
their  weakness  to  throw  off  the  yoke? 
Or  shall  we  go  with  the  look  of  Christ, 
with  conquering  love,  even  though  it 
costs  pain  and  toil  ?  For  that  love 
means  life,  and  sanctifying  every  tear, 
every  sorrow,  brings  back  to  human 
hearts  the  peace  that  passeth  not  away,  the 
joy  that  comes  from  suffering  if  only  the 
sufferer  knows  that  sympathy  is  there. 
That  love  lifts  men  up,  adding  grace  to 
grace,  and  a  sweet  entrance  into  the  ful- 
ness of  the  everlasting  life.  The  greatest 
wrong  is  not  the  cross,  the  greatest  wrong 
is  the  hate  and  bitterness  that  made  that 
poor  thief  rail  at  Christ.  The  greatest 
wrong  is  not  oppression,  the  greatest 
wrong  is  the  hate  and  bitterness  that  op- 
pression calls  forth.  The  only  remedy, 
the  only  thing  that  will  stand  between 
the    two   is    the    cross    of    self-sacrifice. 


1 66         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

This  will  sanctify  your  sufferings.  To  this 
bring  your  experience,  to  this  bring  your 
powers,  to  this  consecrate  your  life,  that 
the  Christ  in  you  may  look  with  infinite 
tenderness  even  on  those  who  revile  the 
divine,  if  perchance  one  among  the  multi- 
tude may  turn  to  him  and  say,  "  Lord, 
remember  me  when  thou  comest  into  thy 
kingdom,"  finding  in  the  very  prayer  a 
solace,  and  in  the  very  agony  its  escape. 
Or  you  may  crucify  the  Christ  pleading 
to-day.  The  historic  Christ  is  beyond 
our  reach,  but  Christ  is  with  us  alway, 
and  you  may  still  crucify  and  taunt  the 
real  indwelling  Christ  and  put  him  to  an 
open  shame ;  but  he  cannot  be  holden  of 
death.  He  will  rise  in  power  and  come 
in  judgment  to  the  life,  whether  personal 
or  national,  and  who  shall  abide  in  the 
day  of  his  coming  ?  Lift  up  your  eyes  to 
Christ,  share  his  death,  live  his  right- 
eousness, bear  the  world's  sorrows,  and 
share  with  Christ  the  everlasting  life  ! 


IX. 

THE  TEMPORAL   KINGDOM. 

The  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness,  Make  ye 
ready  the  way  of  the  Lord,  make  his  paths  straight. 
Every  valley  shall  be  filled,  and  every  mountain 
and  hill  shall  be  brought  low ;  and  the  crooked 
shall  become  straight,  and  the  rough  ways  smooth  ; 
a?id  all  flesh  shall  see  the  salvation  of  God. — 
Luke  iii.  4,  5,  6. 

All  have  heard,  no  doubt,  from  pulpit 
and  press  unfair  criticism  of  the  Jewish 
people  and  the  Jewish  hope  on  the 
ground  that  they  expected  a  temporal 
kingdom.  They  had  every  reason  to 
expect  a  temporal  kingdom.  It  was 
promised  to  them.  The  whole  religious 
life  of  the  Old  Testament  was  centred 
in  the  State.  The  prophecies  echoed 
and  re-echoed  the  hope  that  Zion  should 
be   the   dwelling-place   of  Jehovah,  that 


1 68         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

the  scattered  children  of  Israel  should  be 
gathered  on  the  mountains  of  Judea,  that 
all  nations  should  come  up  with  their 
offerings  to  Jerusalem,  that  Jehovah 
should  reign  in  Zion  and  the  kings  of 
the  earth  should  see  his  glory.  The 
Christian  Church  would  lose  much  if  it 
were  to  brand  such  a  hope  as  Judaistic 
or  wrong.  We  all  ought  to  feel  that 
there  is  a  glorious  hope  of  a  new  heaven 
and  a  new  earth  wherein  dwelleth  right- 
eousness ;  we  ought  all  to  expect,  and 
expect  with  more  faith,  the  consumma- 
tion of  these  prophecies  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament in  the  establishing  of  God's 
kingdom  on  earth,  and  work  with  more 
energy  of  faith  for  it.  But  I  am  afraid 
that  we  are  just  as  likely  as  were  the  Jews 
to  fall  into  the  real  mistakes  that  under- 
lay their  interpretation  of  the  prophecies. 
These  they  interpreted  to  mean,  in  the 
first  place,  that  the  kingdom  should  be 
set  up  quite    apart,  and    independent   of 


THE    TEMPORAL    KINGDOM.  1 69 

the  ethical  demands  that  Jehovah  made 
upon  the  Jewish  people.  They  expected 
that  kingdom  because  they  were  the 
chosen  people,  apart  from  their  responsi- 
bility toward  Jehovah,  apart  from  his 
ethical  standard.  So  even  some  of  those 
who  had  penetrated  most  into  the  secrets 
of  the  Old  Testament  and  the  thought 
of  Jehovah  interpreted  his  demands  too 
much  as  a  form  of  ritual.  They  thought 
that  as  long  as  they  worshipped  in  the 
temple,  and  obeyed  the  demands  of  the 
ritual  and  the  letter  of  the  law,  they  were 
fulfilling  all  duty;  the  temple  worship 
would  indeed  be  established  on  the  basis 
of  ritual  observance,  where  the  law  would 
be  read  daily  and  interpreted  by  the 
authority  of  the  scribes.  They  assumed 
that  a  kingdom  might  be  built  on  things 
external. 

And  they  further  fell  into  the  mistake 
of  believing  that  the  kingdom  would  be 
national  and  exclusive.     It  would  be   a 


170        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

Jewish  kingdom  as  over  against  the 
world.  The  nations  indeed  might  share 
some  of  the  droppings  from  the  sanctu- 
ary;  some  nations  might  be  chosen  out 
to  become  Jews  and  so  enter  into  the 
privileges  of  the  Jews;  indeed,  it  might 
happen  that  all  nations  would  at  last  be 
conquered,  and  in  the  conquest  share  the 
privileges  of  this  divine  kingdom.  The 
Assyrians,  whom  the  rod  of  God's  anger 
broke,  and  Egypt  with  her  people  might 
at  last  worship  Jehovah,  but  the  kingdom 
would  be  to  the  Jews  first,  and  to  the 
nations  afterwards. 

Such  a  kingdom  was  never  contem- 
plated in  the  message  of  the  more  spirit- 
ual of  the  Old  Testament  prophets,  nor 
would  such  a  kingdom  be  anything  but  a 
wrong  interpretation  of  Jehovah's  law. 
The  divine  kingdom  must  be,  in  the  first 
place,  ever  bound  up  in  every  fibre  with 
the  kingdom  of  his  righteousness.  It  is, 
in  fact,  to  be  a  kingdom  of  righteousness, 


THE    TEMPORAL    KINGDOM.  171 

not  of  ritual  nor  of  law.  Some  of  the 
prophets  saw  that.  "  Jehovah  is  weary 
of  your  sacrifices,  your  blood  offerings ; 
these  things  are  an  offence  to  him,  this 
is  not  what  he  wants,"  said  they;  "the 
temple  service  may  be  kept  in  its  glory 
and  beauty,  but  that  will  not  satisfy  the 
demands  of  the  heart  of  Jehovah.  He 
seeks  righteousness.  These  things  are 
but  a  means  to  righteousness ;  and  as 
soon  as  they  cease  to  be  a  means  toward 
righteousness  they  have  no  meaning, 
nay,  they  are  an  offence." 

The  kingdom  of  the  Jews  is  only,  there- 
fore, for  a  purpose.  The  election  of  the 
Jew  is  only  an  election  to  responsibility. 
It  is  a  privilege,  —  all  responsibility 
ought  to  be  a  privilege,  —  but  it  is  a  re- 
sponsibility that  is  bound  up  with  the 
privileges,  and  we  cannot  have  the  privi- 
leges unless  we  manfully  bear  the  respon- 
sibility. Thus  as  soon  as  the  Jewish 
people  ceased  to  be  a  missionary  people, 


172         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

the  Jewish  people  ceased  to  be  an  inter- 
pretation of  God  to  the  world.  They 
lost  their  election,  which  was  to  national 
responsibility.  They  themselves  knew 
that  the  spirit  of  prophecy  had  died 
among  them.  They  felt  they  had  no 
open  vision,  and  so  had  no  message. 
From  the  older  prophets  of  action  to  the 
later  prophets  of  deed  and  word  there 
had  been  a  constant  interpretation  of 
God's  word  to  the  world  around,  but  so 
soon  as  prophecy  had  died,  the  Jewish 
people  ceased  to  have  meaning.  Now, 
unless  the  spirit  of  prophecy  can  be 
awakened,  unless  they  recognize  that 
they  were  only  the  mouthpiece  of  Jeho- 
vah, they  are  to  be  no  longer  a  people. 
When  they  rejected  that  which  was 
offered  them,  and  stoned  those  that 
were  sent  unto  them,  then  Jehovah 
said,  "  Away  with  them  !  "  and  Jerusalem 
perished  from  the  earth  ;  a  prophetic 
people  without  a  message  was  absurd. 


THE    TEMPORAL    KINGDOM.  I  73 

But  the  idea  of  the  divine  kingdom 
did  not  perish  with  the  Jewish  nation. 
The  idea  of  a  divine  kingdom,  a  God- 
kingdom,  is  the  promise  of  God  to  all 
the  nations  of  the  earth,  and  it  is  not 
lost  in  the  ruins  of  Jerusalem.  It  was 
revived  in  the  resurrection  of  Christ; 
and  we  all  as  Christians  are  to  look  for- 
ward to  the  time  when  all  flesh  shall  see 
the  salvation  of  God. 

"  Seeing  is  believing,"  the  old  proverb 
says.  But  Christ  says,  "  Blessed  are 
they  who  have  not  seen,  but  yet  have 
believed."  There  was  very  gross  mate- 
rialism in  the  make-up  of  Thomas  when 
he  needed  to  put  his  hands  actually  upon 
the  wounds  to  be  convinced  that  Christ 
was  risen  from  the  dead.  A  fine  spirit- 
ual insight,  such  as  that  of  Paul  in 
his  later  career,  would  have  needed 
no  such  handling  of  evidence.  Christ 
resurrected  was  ever  with  him ;  Christ 
was    in    his    life.      Henceforth    he    did 


174         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

not  even  want  to  know  Christ  "  after  the 
flesh  "  if  only  spiritual  vision  remained. 

"  Blessed  are  they  that  have  not  seen, 
but  yet  have  believed."  We  look  for- 
ward to  a  kingdom.  We  may  never  see 
it,  but  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should 
not  be  real  for  all  that,  so  real  to  our  life, 
so  real  to  our  hope  and  to  our  wish,  so 
real  to  our  feelings  and  to  our  hearts, 
that  it  becomes  a  reality  in  the  great 
life  about  us.  The  things  of  time  may 
pass  away,  but  that  kingdom  we  have 
seen,  and  no  man  can  rob  us  of  it.  You 
might  go  to  the  poet  and  tell  him  there 
was  no  beauty,  that  you  had  examined  all 
the  images  he  produced  in  his  poetry, 
you  had  analyzed  them,  and  had  found 
that  they  were  a  strange  mixture  of  the 
commonplace  things  round  about  us; 
they  were  not  beauty,  the  beauty  was 
but  the  imagination,  and  that  it  was 
often  in  the  way  of  real  life.  The  poet 
knows  better.     The  artist  knows  better. 


THE    TEMPORAL    KINGDOM.  I  75 

Every  man  that  is  touched  with  the 
artist's  life,  every  man  to  whom  the  poet 
speaks,  knows  that  beauty  is  a  real  thing; 
that  not  chemistry  nor  mathematics  has 
truths  more  powerful  or  lasting  than 
these  realities  that  give  temper  to  life, 
and  beauty  and  glory  to  the  thought 
of  man. 

"  All  flesh  shall  see  the  salvation  of 
God."  For  this  prophet  I  suppose  that 
refers  to  the  terrible  time  when  men  shall 
be  compelled  to  acknowledge  the  power 
of  God  against  their  wills.  But  we  ou^ht 
not  to  be  waiting  for  that  time.  Should  we 
wait  for  the  time  when  we  shall  be  com- 
pelled to  acknowledge  against  our  wills 
that  God  is  not  only  omnipotent,  but  that 
his  kingdom  is  to  be  the  kingdom  of  his 
Christ  ?  We  ought  to  be  so  filled  with 
the  faith  of  the  salvation  of  our  God, 
so  very  confident  in  our  hearts  that  his 
kingdom  is  a  reality,  and  that  we  are 
his   children  and    subjects,  that  we  can 


I76         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

enter  now  into  that  kingdom  in  joy  and 
peace. 

What  is  salvation  ?  What  do  you 
mean  when  you  speak  of  God's  salva- 
tion ?  What  does  the  pulpit  mean  when 
it  comes  to  you  and  asks  if  you  will  ac- 
cept salvation?  Is  it  conduct?  Some 
have  so  defined  it.  A  very  thoughtful 
school  of  Unitarians  in  New  England,  in 
natural  and  wholesome  reaction  against 
the  metaphysical  subtilties  of  a  certain 
doctrinal  teaching,  said,  "Salvation  has 
nothing  to  do  with  opinion  whatsover. 
It  consists  in  conduct."  But  the  general- 
ization is  as  faulty  as  the  one  attacked. 
Salvation  is  not  conduct.  Salvation  is 
not  character.  Salvation  results  in  con- 
duct, results  in  character.  Salvation  is 
no  more  conduct  or  character  than  it  is 
belief.  Salvation  is  not  opinion,  it  is  not 
belief.  //  is  divine  life.  The  salvation 
of  God  is  the  touch  of  the  divine  spirit 
with  his  world  that  brings  into  it  light 


THE    TEMPORAL    KINGDOM.  I  77 

and  life,  that  changes  conduct,  that 
changes  habit,  that  changes  opinion,  that 
changes  social  organization,  that  produces 
revolution  and  evolution  out  of  which  is 
to  come  the  glory  and  beauty  of  the  sec- 
ond incarnation  of  Jehovah  here  on  earth. 
Salvation  is  this  touch,  this  precious  con- 
tact of  the  soul  with  Christ,  that  contact 
which  sooner  or  later  produces  the  ef- 
fects which  that  life  needs.  Look  at  those 
who  came  in  contact  with  Christ, — 
for  instance,  Nicodemus,  the  hair-split- 
ting, intelligent,  refined  Pharisee,  won- 
dering what  this  new  teaching  was  that 
stirred  his  heart  in  some  way  that  the  old 
teaching  had  not  done.  He  was  hungry, 
as  many  to-day  are  hungry,  for  some- 
thing more  than  opinions.  He  went 
there  to  find  out  what  was  this  new 
teaching,  and  Christ  did  not  give  him  a 
new  theology,  he  did  not  change  his  be- 
lief, he  did  not  say  to  him  that  he  must 
leave   all    his  old  traditions   and   accept 


12 


I78  POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

him  as  teacher.  What  he  did  was  to 
infuse  into  the  old  teaching  new  life.  He 
said :  "  All  these  old  traditions  must  be 
born  again  in  heaven.  Into  this  past 
must  be  breathed  the  word  of  God.  Into 
your  life  must  come  new  life."  How 
does  it  come  ?  I  do  not  know  that  Christ 
ever  answered  that  question,  because  it 
was  already  answered.  Nicodemus  had 
come  to  Christ,  and  in  that  personal  con- 
tact and  submission  to  Christ  as  teacher 
had  found  a  salvation  which  I  have  no 
doubt  at  last  changed  his  conduct  and 
belief.  But  it  did  not  begin  with  that,  it 
only  ended  with  that.  Take  the  woman 
who  came  to  Christ  as  he  sat  weary  and 
worn  by  the  well  in  Samaria.  The  poor 
woman  seems  to  have  been  densely  igno- 
rant, to  have  had  her  mind  filled  with 
the  crudest  of  teaching,  the  vulgar  super- 
stitions which  had  found  their  greatest 
strength,  as  always,  in  the  sectarian  ani- 
mosities  between   them    and   the    Jews. 


THE   TEMPORAL    KINGDOM.  I  79 

Christ  does  not  speak  to  her  as  he  spoke 
to  the  Pharisee.  He  puts  his  finger  upon 
the  weak  spot  in  her  life,  which  had  been 
on  a  plane  she  herself  knew  to  be  poor 
and  mean  and  unholy.  Christ  gave  her 
no  new  ethical  code,  but  contact  with 
purity,  holiness,  and  peace  brings  out  in 
the  woman's  darkened  mind  the  question 
which  Christ  ever  asks  and  which  seems 
scarcely  answered,  because  in  the  per- 
sonal contact  with  Christ  she  found  the 
answer.  "  He  told  me  all  things  whatso- 
ever I  did."  Here  was  somebody  she 
could  submit  to,  here  was  a  healer  of  her 
ethical  wounds,  here  was  a  purifier;  the 
woman  was  saved  by  contact. 

There  was  Zaccheus,  whose  life  seems 
to  have  been  fairly  right  as  to  conduct, 
but  it  lacked  something.  He  climbed 
into  a  tree  out  of  mere  curiosity,  the 
world  thought,  to  see  Christ.  But  Christ 
knew  there  was  something  deeper  in  his 
heart,   and   he    says,  "  I    shall   sup   with 


l8o        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

you,"  and  in  that  personal  contact,  Zac- 
cheus  finds  the  thing  he  needs;  a  relation- 
ship is  established  between  himself  and  a 
spiritual  righteousness,  and  out  of  this 
relationship  springs  a  new  conduct,  a 
changed  belief.  And  out  of  this  rela- 
tionship and  this  contact,  shall  spring  a 
changed  social  organization,  a  changed 
life,  a  new  kingdom  of  God,  when  all 
flesh  shall  see  the  salvation  of  God. 

No  one  of  us  surely  has  been  without 
in  his  life  some  personal  contact  which 
has  helped  and  elevated  and  lifted  him 
up.  We  have  felt  the  power  of  men  with 
whom  we  did  not  agree,  men  whose  in- 
tellectual life  possibly  we  felt  was  far 
below  our  own,  men  whom  in  many  ways 
we  could  not  always  admire,  but  they 
had  something  that  we  had  not,  and  per- 
sonal contact  with  them  helped  us,  gave 
us  nobler  views  of  life,  stirred  us  to  new 
thoughts,  made  us  more  ambitious  for 
the   future  both  of  ourselves  and  those 


THE    TEMPORAL    KINGDOM.  l8l 

about  us.  We  have  felt  the  power  of 
personal  contact,  because  we  have  come 
face  to  face  with  men  whom  we  admired ; 
but  how  with  Christ?  We  cannot  come 
in  contact  surely  with  Christ,  for  he  has 
passed  away.  If  only  we  could  walk 
with  him,  if  only  we  could  see  him,  if 
only  our  hands  could  touch  him,  that 
personal  contact  would  mean  for  us  per- 
chance what  it  meant  to  many  of  the 
disciples ;  but  he  has  passed  away,  and 
with  him  there  has  passed  a  glory  from 
this  earth  and  forever !  No,  dear  friends, 
that  contact  is  possible  now  and  to-day 
and  forever.  It  is  that  personal  contact, 
that  personal  relationship,  which  is  the 
real  spiritual  life  of  the  community  to- 
day. Under  all  the  passing  forms  of 
doctrine  and  creed  the  real  power  is  this 
personal  indwelling  life. 

Where  is  Christ?  "I  am  with  you 
always."  Where  ?  "  Everywhere."  There 
is  no  reason  why  your  life  may  not  come 


1 82         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

in  contact  with  Christ  if  only  you  will 
seek  him.  He  seeks  you,  if  only  you  will 
be  sought.  Christ  is  ever  willing  to  make 
you  see  his  salvation  that  you  may  so 
walk  and  never  miss  it  again,  never  wan- 
der ao-ain  in  the  mists  and  darkness  which 
have  sometimes  come  over  your  life.  I 
do  not  know  what  you  think  your  life 
needs,  but  it  needs  everything  if  you 
have  not  found  Christ.  It  is  sometimes 
in  moments  of  business  depression,  some- 
times in  moments  of  darkest  sorrow  that 
Christ  makes  himself  most  felt,  because 
Christ  came  to  the  lost,  he  came  to  the 
suffering,  he  came  to  the  sorry  of  heart. 
It  was  not  to  the  contented,  the  self- 
righteous,  he  came,  but  to  those  who 
needed  him.  And  it  is  in  the  moments 
when  our  hearts  are  bowed  down  that  we 
most  feel  the  need  of  Christ  and  our 
hearts  go  out  to  him.  When  your  life  is 
restless  and  discontented,  when  you  feel 
that    your    life    needs   something,    some 


THE   TEMPORAL    KINGDOM.  1 83 

purpose,  some  direction,  some  guidance, 
it    is  in  such  a  moment   that  Christ  is 
nearest  to  you,  reaching  out  his  hand  to 
you  and  telling  you  that  he  will  be  your 
teacher,  your  helper,  your  guide,  he  will 
be  to  you  what  you  need  him  to  be  to 
you.     It  may  be  that  your  opinions  do 
not  need  changing.    You  may  have  been 
well  brought  up.     Your  opinions  may  be 
so   far  different   from    your  way  of   life 
that  to  change  your  opinions  would  not 
change  your  life.     Then  it  will  not  be 
your  opinions   that    Christ    will    change 
first.     It  may  not  be  your  conduct.    Your 
conduct    may    be    outwardly    what    the 
world  will  call  moral,  what  you  yourself 
regard  as  fairly  satisfactory.     You  may 
have  been  able  to  keep  your  life  fairly 
clean,  fairly  pure,  but  what  does  it  need  ? 
If  your  conduct  needs  life  Christ  will  give 
it.     On  one  of  the  great  estates  of  Eng- 
land  the  passing  traveller  is  shown   an 
artificial  tree,  wonderfully  painted  to  imi- 


184         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

tate  the  natural  branches,  but  made  of 
unyielding  iron.  At  a  little  distance  the 
eye  may  be  deceived,  but  only  for  a  little, 
and  the  second  impression  is  one  of  dis- 
appointment and  ugliness,  for  there  is  no 
life  there.  Far  more  beautiful  are  the 
little  shrubs  that  grow  about  the  grounds, 
that  will  never  reach  the  stateliness  of 
the  imitation  tree,  but  which  have  within 
them  the  life  that  forms  anew  each 
spring  the  glowing  freshness  of  their 
green.  What  is  your  morality  ?  Come 
to  Christ  that  he  may  breathe  into  it  the 
life  that  will  grow  into  his  *beauty,  slough- 
ing off  the  old  branches  that  there  may 
be  new  life,  new  glory,  new  beauty,  that 
there  may  be  life  born  of  God  and  quick- 
ened by  his  Spirit. 

Where  shall  you  come  to  him  that  you 
may  see  him  ?  You  do  not  require  to  go 
to  seek  him,  he  is  everywhere.  Some 
have  told  me  where  they  found  Christ. 
One    in    the    bow  of  an  ocean   steamer, 


THE    TEMPORAL    KINGDOM.  1 85 

where  he  had  crawled  one  stormy  night, 
having  coaxed  the  sailor  to  let  him  stay- 
there.  There,  as  he  looked  out  into  the 
darkness  of  the  storm,  he  found  Christ. 
It  was  not  in  the  hush,  it  was  not  in  the 
storm,  nor  in  the  still  small  voice,  it  was 
simply  in  the  touch  of  that  spirit  with 
spirit.  He  went  back  tempted  to  believe 
it  was  his  imagination  playing  upon  him, 
but  felt  as  the  day  went  by  and  night  fol- 
lowed day,  that  Christ  had  really  been 
with  him  in  the  midst  of  the  stormy 
wave.  He  found  Christ,  and  in  con- 
tact and  touch  his  life  was  made  new. 
Amidst  the  business  of  Wall  Street, 
amidst  the  tramp  of  many  feet,  amidst 
the  plunging  rush  after  gold  and  success, 
a  man  walked  down  that  street  burdened 
with  the  cares  of  the  world  and  of  life. 
Just  as  he  reached  the  door  of  the  shop 
the  bell  of  Trinity  struck  one,  and  to  his 
soul  it  was  the  voice  of  Christ  calling 
him   from  shame  into  a  new  life,  into  a 


1 86         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

new  happiness  and  a  new  hope.  It  may 
be  in  the  hush  of  sacrifice,  when  we  wor- 
ship together  at  the  feet  of  Christ,  that 
you  have  come  in  scarcely  knowing  if 
you  believe  or  if  you  believe  not.  Christ 
was  there,  loving,  pleading,  lifting  up, 
ever  saying,  "  My  peace  I  give  unto  you. 
Not  as  the  world  gives,  give  I  unto  you. 
Let  not  your  hearts  be  troubled,"  and  in 
that  touch  you  have  felt  the  salvation  of 
our  God.  And  then,  if  you  are  true,  you 
will  go  out  and  let  that  salvation  be 
seen.  Men  may  not  possibly  be  inter- 
ested in  your  opinions,  they  will  look  at 
your  conduct,  they  will  look  at  your  life. 
Your  conduct  may  not  bear  marked  pro- 
gress at  first,  but  in  the  spirit  in  which 
you  hold  your  opinions,  the  spirit  in 
which  you  go  about  your  daily  duties,  in 
the  new  inspiration  for  righteousness, 
holiness,  and  truth,  you  will  show  to  the 
world  around  the  salvation  of  our  God, — 
that  Christ  is  a  reality,  that  he  still  speaks 


THE  TEMPORAL  KINGDOM.     1 87 

to  men,  that  his  touch  is  still  felt ;  and 
men  will  know,  even  if  they  do  not  con- 
fess it,  that  you  have  something  of  good, 
that  life  is  more  than  they  have  made  it, 
that  God  is  still  in  his  world,  is  still 
teaching  men,  and  "  all  flesh  shall  see  the 
salvation  of  our  God." 

Let  us  avoid  one  mistake  as  we  try  to 
make  that  salvation  seen,  —  the  mistake 
of  the  exclusive  spirit  of  infidelity.  This 
infidelity  thinks  Jehovah  is  going  to  take 
out  one  here  and  one  there  from  a  great 
number,  and  transfer  them  into  his  king- 
dom. That  is  not  election.  Election  is 
not  the  arbitrary,  sovereign  act  of  Jeho- 
vah, going  here  and  there  and  taking  out 
one  to  transfer  into  his  kingdom.  Elec- 
tion  is  the  choosing  in  God's  sovereign 
grace  of  you  and  of  me  to  be  his  instru- 
ments in  making  his  salvation  seen. 
And  if  we  will  make  our  calling  and 
election  sure,  then  we  are  to  make  that 
salvation  show,  —  show  in  business,  show 


1 88         POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

in  politics,  show  in  our  life,  show  in  our 
national  life.  We  are  chosen  to  respon- 
sibilities, to  contact  with  Christ,  that  he 
may  have  contact  with  the  world  through 
us,  —  Christ  in  us  speaking  to  men,  tell- 
ing men  that  there  is  a  judgment  seat, 
and  a  righteousness,  that  there  is  an  in- 
finite and  tender  forgiveness,  and  the 
yearning  of  the  All  Father  for  the  hearts 
of  his  wandering  children.  "  All  we  like 
sheep  have  gone  astray;  we  have  turned 
every  one  to  his  own  way ;  and  the  Lord 
hath  laid  on  him  the  iniquity  of  us  all." 

The  kingdom  of  God  is  coming 
through  us  if  we  are  faithful ;  a  pro- 
phetic, sacrificial,  and  kingly  Church  is 
yet  to  rule  this  world's  destiny.  The 
voice  is  now  crying  in  the  wilderness. 
Christ  is  coming  in  power,  the  power  of 
divine  indwelling  love.  He  is  to  make 
all  things  new.  Now,  organized  Christi- 
anity actually  obscures  for  some  the 
vision  of  the    Christ.     Doctrinal    discus- 


THE    TEMPORAL    KINGDOM.  1 89 

sion,  sectarian  strife,  unholy  zeal,  are  the 
mountains  to  be  moved,  as  well  as  athe- 
ism, materialism,  and  agnosticism.  And 
the  reign  of  Christ  is  to  be  a  personal 
reign,  for  no  other  kind  of  reign  would 
be  of  any  use,  just  as  no  other  kind  of 
contact  than  personal  contact  is  salva- 
tion. The  Church  is  to  be  the  Temple 
of  the  living  God;  its  message  the  voice 
of  the  indwelling  Christ. 

"  All  flesh  shall  see  the  salvation  of 
God."  Are  you  trusting  in  that  salva- 
tion ?  Are  you  making  it  seen  ?  Do 
men  feel  it  in  the  touch  of  your  hand- 
clasp, in  the  way  in  which  you  do  your 
business,  in  the  way  in  which  you  draw 
up  your  contracts,  in  the  way  in  which 
you  argue  your  cases  in  court,  in  the  way 
in  which  you  live  in  society,  in  the  way  in 
which  you  do  the  little  deeds  of  kindness 
that  come  naturally  to  your  heart  ?  Are 
men  seeing  the  salvation  of  our  God,  and 
attributing  it  to  Christ?     Are  men  seeing 


I9O        POWER    OF    AN    ENDLESS    LIFE. 

that  salvation  because  they  see  your  life 
sweet,  lifted  up,  ennobled,  purified,  right- 
eous ?  Then  we  do  not  need  to  wait  for 
the  coming  of  Christ ;  he  has  come.  He 
has  come  in  our  hearts,  he  has  come  in 
his  Church.  And  when  all  Christian 
men  so  live,  the  Church  will  be  a  real 
incarnation,  —  the  glory  and  beauty  of 
his  countenance,  and  "  all  flesh  shall  see 
the  salvation  of  our  God."  God's  salva- 
tion and  the  needs  of  the  world  are  one. 
All  flesh  shall  bow  at  the  name  of  Jesus, 
and  we  shall  have  no  need  any  more  to 
say  one  to  another,  "  Know  Jehovah," 
for  all  shall  know  him  from  the  least 
even  unto  the  greatest.  We  shall  joy  in 
our  salvation,  for  "  all  flesh  shall  see  the 
salvation  of  God,"  and  shall  feel  forever 
and  forever  the  touch  of  Gods  infinite 
love.     May  he  grant  it ! 


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